


I Touch the Place Where I’d Find Your Face

by headcanonftw



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, In My Time of Dying, M/M, Season 2, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-03
Updated: 2010-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-16 08:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/537684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headcanonftw/pseuds/headcanonftw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tessa asks Dean whether he’s ready to move on or if he wants to stay, Dean does what he must to protect his brother. Dean follows Sam as he hunts, taking care of him and learning how to be a spirit, and they both learn just how strong love that crosses the veil can be. And how weak. </p><p>AU of season 2</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Touch the Place Where I’d Find Your Face

Reapers don’t play games with demons, and Death certainly has nothing to fear from humans. 

  
Except that, perhaps, the Winchesters don’t really count.   
  
:::  
  
Dean ran down the halls of the hospital, dodging passersby out of habit even though he knew he could pass right through them – spirits didn’t have to deal with such semantics as mass or matter – seeking the lying bitch out.   
  
Sweet little Tessa, with her big earnest eyes and unthreatening body, was a reaper. It made a lot of sense once he thought about it, which only added to how completely pissed off he was that he fell for something so stupid in the first place. But at least the thing knew him: what better way to get Dean Winchester to agree to something than to take the form of someone in need (and, let’s face it, pretty damn fuckable)?   
  
But right now, Dean couldn’t think too much about having been duped, couldn’t think about how predictable this proved him or how much danger that predictability put him and his family into – he knew what the thing was now, and that automatically meant he had an advantage.   
  
Know thine enemy, and all that noise.   
  
He rounded a corner and saw her sitting there – all cropped hair and trim waist and big, big eyes – just waiting for him. Like she knew he knew. It only made it worse.   
  
“Hi Dean,” she said, voice toneless yet somehow so stupidly calm and collected. Who had a right to sound like that when Dean was fuming and stupid and dying?   
  
Breathing heavily and trying his best not to lash out – mostly because he knew he was a spirit and almost anything he did would be ineffectual at best – he snarled,  
  
“You know, you read the most interesting things. For example, did you know that reapers can alter human perception?” She just stared, with those big, stupid eyes. “I sure didn’t. Basically they can make themselves appear however they want. Like, say, a…a pretty girl.”  
  
He waited for a response, maybe for her to own up to having played him, but she just stared and stared. Dean noticed that she was dressed differently now, in something stylish and dark – she’d thought to change her appearance now that she didn’t have to keep wearing the hospital-patients’ attire to fool him.   
  
“You’re much prettier than the last reaper I met,” he added venomously, knowing it was childish and not caring.   
  
“I was wondering when you would figure it out.” Still calm and just staring staring staring.   
  
Dean’s upper lip curled in a sneer. “I should have known,” he said. “That whole ‘accepting fate’ rap of yours is far too laid back for a dead chick.” And it was. No one just _accepts_ death; everyone has some fight left in them at the bitter end, no matter how they might have approached it in life. Such an obvious tell, and god _damn_ it, he’d still eaten it up.   
  
Still searching her face for expression – blink or something, damn it! – he continued, “But the mother, and the body, I’m still trying to figure that one out.”   
  
And finally, a sign of contrition – her head dropped down and to the side, her eyes lowered for a moment before trying to explain, as if to a child. “It’s my sandbox. I can make you see whatever I want.”  
  
“What is this, like, a turn-on for you? Huh, _toying_ with me?” Dean spat.   
  
“You didn’t give me much choice,” she replied, and Dean’s stomach clenched as he realized she was probably right. “You saw my true form and you flipped out.” A coy, nearly girlish smile: “Kinda hurts a girl’s feelings. This was the only way I could get you to talk to me.”  
  
“Okay, fine. We’re talking.”  His voice was the one he used with Sammy when he really didn’t feel like talking. “What the hell do you want to talk about?”  
  
“How death is nothing to fear,” Tessa deadpanned, and Dean’s clenched stomach seemed to drop out completely. This is so not a talk he wants to have right now. Probably ever.   
  
Tessa stepped forward then, reaching out and laying a miraculous hand on his cheek, his first human contact since before the accident. Though he flinched from the wrongness of Death’s hand upon his face, Dean figured he could hardly be berated for leaning into the touch a little. When Tessa spoke again, her voice was soft, consoling, but unyielding in what he knew she had to say.   
  
“It’s your time to go, Dean. And you’re living on borrowed time already.”  
  
:::  
  
John stood beside the summoning sigil he’d created, chanting the Latin he knew so well as he sliced open his right palm and let the blood drip into the bowl below. He lit a match and dropped it in too so the contents sparked and flared, and he stopped speaking, staring around the empty boiler room. His stomach was tangled, not so much from fear as he would have expected, but with guilt – he had promised Sam he wouldn’t hunt the demon until Dean was better, and he told himself this didn’t count, but it didn’t change the fact that he was betraying his sons’ trust by being here. Both of them.   
  
A firm hand grabbed his right shoulder – his broken arm, of course, _Jesus_ – and he turned around, startled.   
  
“What the hell are you doing down here, buddy?” the man demanded. He was a utility worker of some kind, someone who had probably been nearby and heard the noise or seen the fire.   
  
John sputtered, “I can explain – ”   
  
But as the guy turned, telling him about how he’d have to explain it to security, John cocked the Colt.   
  
“Hey,” he asked, a smirk pulling at his lips despite himself. “How stupid do you think I am?”   
  
And the guy turned back and stared at him, staying in character until his eyes glowed cruelly yellow and he smiled.   
  
“You really want an answer to that?” the demon asked, mirth dripping from his voice.   
  
John held his ground with the Colt as he heard the two men – more demons – take their places behind him. Bodyguards.   
  
“You conjuring me, John, I’m surprised,” the demon sing-songed as he began to pace. “I took you for a lot of things, but suicidally reckless wasn’t one of them.”   
  
John tightened his grip on the gun. “I could always shoot you.”   
  
“You could always miss.” The demon moved, hands waving in a caricature of movement, but stayed in place, watching him. “And you’ve only got one try, don’t ya?” It narrowed its eyes and John felt his skin crawl with how much he reviled the evil son of a bitch. “Did you really think you could trap me?”   
  
And John held his head high, pushed the guilt aside, and said, “Oh, I don’t wanna trap you.” He lowered the Colt to his side, a show of faith. “I want to make a deal.”   
  
:::  
  
Sam stood at the window side of Dean’s bed, hands in his pockets and staring down at his brother – still somehow so beautiful despite all the tubes and tape trying their best to distort and hide him. He looked around a little, not sure what he was looking for – or rather, knowing he wouldn’t actually see what he was looking for.   
  
“Dean? Are you here?”  
  
Still looking, Sam sees nothing, so he talks to Dean’s lifeless – no, not lifeless – body, praying he can hear him.   
  
“I couldn’t find anything in the book…I don’t know how to help you,” he admitted, wishing above all things that he didn’t have to say it. “But I’ll keep trying, all right? As long as you keep fighting.   
  
“I mean, come on you can’t…you can’t leave me here alone with Dad, we’ll kill each other, you know that.” He tried to laugh, his smile feeling cold and wrong on his face with Dean’s closed eyes the only ones there to see. His throat was full of feeling and his voice cracked, but he’d never cared so little about anything in his life.   
  
“Dean, you’ve got to hold on. You can’t go, man, not now. We were just starting to be brothers again.”  
  
No witty remark about Sam being a girl. Chick-flick moments allowed for a moment by default. Sam just stared at his brother, wishing and praying and hoping against hope.   
  
“Can you hear me?”  
  
:::  
  
Staring out the window into the darkness of outside, only his inexplicably present reflection (though he knew no one else would see it if they came in), Dean silently panicked as he searched his brain for something to say. Something that would get rid of Tessa and get him back to his dad and his brother.   
  
 _Sammy…_  
  
“Look, I’m sure you've heard this before, but… You’ve gotta make an exception, you…you’ve gotta cut me a break,” Dean stammered, hoping Tessa would hear his desperation and give in to him.   
  
“Stage three: bargaining.” Still so unaffected. Dean couldn’t even find it in him to be angry: he was too scared for that.   
  
“I’m serious,” he said, voice shaking. “My family’s in danger. See, we’re kind of in the middle of this, um…war…and they need me.” The thought of Dad and Sammy trying to hunt down the demon together, everyday a battle or a contest over who was more obsessed. They’d kill each other, he knew it. They needed Dean, as a buffer and a soldier and…  
  
 _They don’t need you._  
  
“The fight’s over,” Tessa said, so quiet, like the gravity of her words could be avoided if her voice was just soft enough.   
  
“No, it isn’t,” Dean insisted immediately.  _It can’t be. They need me._  
  
“It is for you,” she assured him, eyes big and pleading, and Dean could almost see a type of desperation in her. Like she needed him to understand something very important and Dean just wasn’t listening. “Dean, you’re not the first soldier I’ve plucked from the field. They all feel the same. They can’t leave. Victory hangs in the balance. But they’re wrong.” That imploring look, asking him to know what she knew. “The battle goes on without them.”  
  
Dean couldn’t hear her, as much as her big eyes screamed for him to listen. “My brother,” he said, like that was all the explanation he needed. And it was. “He could die without me.”  
  
“Maybe he will…maybe he won’t. Nothing you can do about it.”  
  
And Dean’s heart nearly stopped at how blunt and mean it was, so badly he had to turn away. Of course there was something he could do about it, he could _live_. He could protect Sammy from the things out there in the dark, from the demon, from himself. Sam needed him, he…  
  
 _Not like you need them._  
  
“It’s an honorable death. A warrior’s death.”  
  
“There’s no such thing as an honorable death,” Dean croaked, emotion barely contained as he pleaded with her to hear him. “My corpse is going to rot in the ground and my family is going to die!”  
  
Just those big eyes, staring and so sad, trying to make him hear something too ludicrous to ever know. Maybe there had been a chance for her once, maybe there was a chance her message would penetrate; but now just the thought of Sam’s dead and decaying body his answer was so simple: “No.”  He stood up straighter, resolution piled high. “No, I’m not going with you, I don’t care what you do.”  
  
Dean watched her body deflate and felt a moment’s victorious glow – he had a chance, he knew it! – but then she looked back up and the tension rose again in his shoulders.  
  
“Well, like you said. There’s always a choice.” Her face was set, though a sadness played beneath the coldness that made Dean uneasy. “I can’t make you come with me.   
  
“But you’re not getting back in your body. And that’s just facts.”  
  
Dean felt his eyes widen, felt his nonexistent insides clench, but the extraordinary coldness that spread throughout him was too overwhelming to care. He thought of his body, far away and breathing by machines and felt suddenly very alone without it. He wanted his dad…needed to see him and Sam.   
  
“So yes, you can stay,” Tessa continued. “You’ll stay here for years – disembodied, scared – and over the decades it’ll probably drive you mad. Maybe you'll even get violent.”  
  
Dean started at her last statement, leaning in and asking, “What are you saying?” praying to nothingness that it didn’t mean what he thought it did – although really, what else could it mean?   
  
“Dean,” she said, smiling and patronizing again, though Dean hardly cared at this point. “How do you think angry spirits are born? They can’t let go and they can’t move on. And you’re about to become one.” It hit him at the same moment she said it: “The same thing you hunt.”   
  
:::  
  
Azazel looked down his nose at John Winchester, standing as tall as he could with his arm in a sling next to his little altar. “It’s very unseemly, making deals with devils,” he teased, loving how John stood firm in the face of the one thing he hated more than anything. Humans were so much fun. “How do I know this isn’t just another trick?”  
  
“It’s no trick. I will give you the Colt and the bullet, but you’ve got to help Dean.” John breathed, keeping calm and trying to stay menacing. “You’ve got to bring him back.”  
  
“Why, John, you're a sentimentalist!” Azazel crowed, smiling with glee. “If only your boys knew how much their daddy loved them.”  
  
John never budged. “It's a good trade. You care a hell of a lot more about this gun than you do Dean.”  
  
“Don’t be so sure. He killed some people very special to me.”  He let his obvious strength and advantage bleed into the tension in the room. “But still, you’re right, he isn’t much of a threat. And neither is your other son.”  
  
He eyed John for a moment, smirking as he asked, “You know the truth, right? About Sammy? And the other children?”  
  
John smirked too now, less with mirth as with disgust. “Yeah. I've known for a while.”  
  
“But Sam doesn't, does he? You've been playing dumb.” If the boy only knew his destiny…  
  
“Can you bring Dean back, yes or no?” John persisted.   
  
“No,” Azazel said with levity. When John tensed and looked for a moment like he might just shit a brick, he added, “But I know someone who can. It’s not a problem.”  
  
A smile now. It was a shame really – John had been a worthy opponent, as they say. It was unfortunate his run as a hunter had to end so anticlimactically.   
  
John’s face relaxed and he tried a smile again. “Good.” He took a breath and said, “So we have a deal.”  
  
“No, John, not yet. You still need to sweeten the pot,” Azazel growled, yellow eyes flashing as he came forward.   
  
“With what?” John asked, and through his victory Azazel could feel the irony that John Winchester – dealer in death of all shapes, sizes, and trades – couldn’t figure this one out.   
  
“There's something else I want as much as that gun,” he teased. “Maybe more.”  
  
:::  
  
Dean sat on the bed, Tessa behind him stroking his hair tenderly. Funny how he hadn’t noticed before that they were in the same room she’d shown him earlier, where her supposed mother and comatose body had been posed for him. He wondered idly if there was ever actually someone in the room, and whether Tessa was just making it look empty now. He wondered if the hospital was actually this cold or if that was just the dread pooling in his stomach.   
  
He thought about anything but this. Anything but the choice he had to make.   
  
How could anyone choose? How could anyone know whether it was right to abandon their family rather than become a monster? How many hunters before him faced this choice? How many spirits had he killed that had once been the Bobby or John of that decade? How many mothers who wanted to stay and watch their children grow, children who’d wanted to watch over their parents or siblings, lovers who couldn’t face eternity without their other?   
  
Tessa’s voice was going for soothing, but to him it was nearly grating and – for unfathomable reasons – he fought the urge to flinch. It hardly mattered now whether she knew how weak he was, but he felt like he needed to hold tight to whatever pieces of his protective walls he had left.   
  
“It’s time to put the pain behind you,” she said, hand never leaving his head, so relaxed while everything was so inconceivably fucked.   
  
It was a valid point –he’d joked before, with Sammy, that hunting wasn’t exactly a pro-ball career – and he figured he should try to weigh that option. Whispering like she had, mostly because he couldn’t believe what he was considering, Dean asked, “And go where?”   
  
“Sorry,” she answered, and Dean had expected as much. “I can't give away the big punch line.” The same kind of dumb joke he’d make. His jokes had always been so stupid.   
  
She stopped touching him, though Dean could almost feel her stare. He still forced his eyes down in front of him, trying to wish away the inevitable question. Stay and become a monster, or go and…not. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to leave Sam and Dad. But he couldn’t bear the idea of becoming an angry spirit either. What if he hurt someone? What if he was the next thing Dad and Sam hunted? Would he let them? Did it matter?   
  
“Moment of truth. No changing your mind later.” A moment of quiet before she asked the back of his head, “So what’s it going to be?”  
  
 _Not like you need them._  
  
Dean turned and looked at her. He knew his expiration date was long past due, and he had no right to continue forcing people to keep hunting by becoming the next monster of the week. But he also knew he needed to hold onto his family. He knew he needed to keep fighting. He fought with himself as he searched her face, looking for the answer. Which was selfish? Which was selfless? All his definitions were getting mixed up, things he’d held all his life as true looking less and less infallible.   
  
In that moment, Dean thought of black, billowing smoke, of yellow eyes and sneering mouths. He thought of how it had commandeered his father and killed his mother, how it had doomed all of them to misery and, he had no doubt, untimely death. He thought of Sam, probably arguing with Dad because he was so damn scared about losing Dean. He thought of Dad, and the Colt, and everything they had been working for, and he knew what he had to say.   
  
Maybe it was wrong to enlist some future hunter in his inevitable salt-and-burn. Maybe he was being selfish. But as he opened his mouth and said a clear and simple, “No,” he knew it was, for once in his insignificant little life, exactly what he wanted.   
  
Tessa’s eyes were full of grief, but there was a kind of resignation there too, like she had known all along that she probably wouldn’t win this one, and she opened her mouth to speak – possibly to talk him out of it, maybe just to ask why – but before any sound came out the fluorescent lights overhead flickered and buzzed, and she and Dean looked up and around, seeking a reason.   
  
Dean tore his eyes from the supernatural signs he’d learned to read all his life and asked, “What are you doing that for?”  
  
Tessa looked at him and said simply, “I’m not doing it.”  
  
A bang and crash and Tessa spun to stare at a vent that had burst open, and Dean watched with wide green eyes as demonic smoke billowed out and into the room, into her. But there was no screaming, no fear – she didn’t even flinch.  
  
When she turned around, Dean caught but a moment’s glimpse of yellow eyes before they gave way to her normal grey-green. The smoke burst from her once more, seeming to simply appear several feet from her body before disappearing with a violent scream. Eyes still wide and heart beating fast and hard in his chest, Dean searched her face for answers. She smiled.   
  
“Reapers are of a higher, much more natural order than demons. There was nothing to fear.” Her eyes turned sad once more, and she added solemnly, “One deal cannot break another, after all.” She held out her hand, and Dean eyed it warily, unable to shake the resemblance he felt to a spooked dog. “Come, Dean. It’s time to see yourself die.”   
  
:::  
  
Sam heard the rush of footsteps before he allowed himself to register the long, high-pitched beep of the heart monitor, and he was being shoved out of the way before his brain had caught up with what the hell that meant. Then suddenly he was crying, huge tears falling down his face as doctors and nurses readied the defibrillator for the second time, paddles pressing into Dean’s soft white flesh for only an instant before his back arched then fell.   
  
“Please,” Sam pleaded, “Dean, please…don’t leave me…please…”  
  
But the heart monitor held its shrill tone for only so much longer before it was abruptly silenced, and all Sam could hear above the rushing in his ears was someone saying, “Time of death, 9:37am.”  
  
“Dean!” Sam cried, his knees going weak as all six feet of him sank down the doorframe to the cold, tiled floor. “Dean, no…Dean!”  
  
He felt a firm weight rest on his shoulder as the medical staff filed out and he shrugged it away, striking out with his huge, useless hands. “Get your fucking hands off – !”   
  
His hands didn’t connect, didn’t hit anything, but the hand held on so he turned, itching to hit something, someone, to try to expel the building pain and hopelessness in his chest. No one was standing near him, but he could still feel the press of fingers, freezing and burning hot all at once on his shoulder, with no one close enough to be touching.   
  
Slanted eyes huge and wet and staring around like a wild man, Sam called softly, “Dean?”  
  
The fingers clenched in reassuring pressure before disappearing in the wake of tingling coldness. And through all the horror and pain, Sam smiled.   
  
:::  
  
A little over an hour later, they found Dad. He was just down the hall from Dean’s room, and the nursing staff claimed that he was shouting something about a cheat as he collapsed. They tried to resuscitate him, but finally called it at 10:41am.   
  
Heart attack, they said.   
  
Sam and Dean knew it was the demon.   
  
Dean’s more and more conspicuously silent chest felt heavy with guilt, and while he wasn’t quite sure why yet, he knew it was real and well-deserved.   
  
:::  
  
After losing his father and brother in the same day, Sam had been asked to meet with the on-call hospital psychologist, in order to determine whether he was mentally fit to reenter the world without them.   
  
When the tiny young woman asked how he felt about Dad’s death, Sam answered coolly, “I’m sure he knew what he was doing.”   
  
Then she asked about Dean. “Were you and your brother close?” she asked.   
  
Sam smiled and said, “As close as you can be with a person, and then closer.”   
  
She asked, “And now that he’s gone, how do you feel?”   
  
Sam looked down at his hand, where Dean’s amulet lay cupped in his palm, the black chord twisted and tangled through his long, crooked fingers. They’d given it to him in a box with Dean’s and Dad’s clothes, shoes, and wallets, the necklace and Dean’s ring fallen to the bottom. It still shined, glinted with light that wasn’t quite reflected.   
  
He then looked over his shoulder at the door, and in that moment he thought he could see just how Dean would have looked, leaning against the doorframe with one leg tossed over the other and arms crossed, bored as hell and letting everyone know it.   
  
Sam answered, “Like he’s still here.” He looked back at the woman and just kept smiling. “Looking out for me, like always.”   
  
:::  
  
This whole spirit thing was seriously weird.   
  
Dean’s world was full of contradictions: he couldn’t touch things consciously, it seemed, to pick them up or move them, but he could sit on a bed or a chair and not fall through the cushions like a cartoon character. If he wanted to move from one room to another, he could just as easily fall through a wall as walk through a door if he was concentrating, but he could also lean against doorways and objects as he did with a body. And while people passing in hallways or on the street passed through him with hardly a sensation in Dean’s stomach, not being able to touch Sammy anymore killed him every time he failed, that one touch in the hospital apparently his last.   
  
He remembered having worn hospital clothes while he was in the hospital, those weird whitish-blue patients’ scrubs, but at some point had woken up in jeans and Dad’s leather jacket, same as he’d been wearing the night of the accident. Probably, considering he didn’t have an actual body to see, everything he looked at was his own mental projection of himself, Dean through Dean’s eyes. Sometimes, as he gazed down at his amulet where it rested against his chest, or his boots or all the layers of shirts he wore, he wondered why he looked human at all.  
  
His emotions were all out of whack for the first few days. He’d fly from high and happy to sad or angry in a heartbeat before flipping around and back again. He’d get mad and hit things, crashing plates from walls or glasses from tables – just like the glass of water in Dad’s room at the hospital – then feel so sorry for himself he’d literally curl up into a ball and hide. His protective barriers seemed to have died with his body, so while his spirit or soul or whatever tried to gather itself into an independent being, he was helpless and out of control and he hated it.   
  
And the flickering lights and sudden gusts of wind he seemed to cause every time he got frustrated only made him feel worse, scream louder, sob harder.   
  
Dean tried practicing interacting with the world when he was stable enough to do so, but he found he couldn’t touch anything unless he was volatile and angry. His body would reverberate with a kind of high-frequency surge of power, and he could move anything he wanted, sometimes even more controlled than just knocking things over. But the whole sensation left his head echoing with accusations ( _maybe you’ll even get violent_ ) and he would have to go away and hide again.   
  
Everything around him was a mystery now, too. He’d seen Sam and Bobby and Bobby’s house all his life, yet for some reason walking Bobby’s house as a spirit made everything seem completely different. The floral wallpaper seemed alive, the piles of books and papers definitely moved around him, and just as his emotions fluctuated at will, so did his physical senses in this new place. The tether of his body in the hospital before had made everything clear and normal for his spirit to roam, but now he could barely make out the stairs as he descended them.   
  
Dean took each step ridiculously slowly as he tried to relearn how to walk – not that he could really fall, but maybe he’d get used to that, too – and listened carefully every time Bobby tried to say something consoling to Sam, though Dean couldn’t be sure if Bobby was actually whispering or whether it was his hearing these days.   
  
So everything sucked out loud, from moving to feeling to _being_ , and Dean was spinning without any control.   
  
He always thought he’d needed Dad’s approval, Dad’s orders to keep himself reined in, to control whatever burning fires he was always trying to control; but now that he was gone, Dean realized he hadn’t needed Dad there to keep him tame – he’d needed him there to give him purpose.   
  
All Dean had left was Sammy, and Dean couldn’t do anything for him. Neither sensation felt very new, but at least before he could mask his fear and confusion and stupidity with beer and smirking and getting laid. Now, though, his body was too fragile, his intentions too vague and his fear too insurmountable to do much more than just try to lay a hand on his shoulder as an occasional reminder that he was here. And while Sam always responded to the touch – a little shiver or glance over his shoulder at where he must have estimated Dean’s face to be – Dean’s heart would ache as he watched his hand fall through him, because all he’d become to his brother was cold, useless air.   
  
:::  
  
Sam poured over Bobby’s books about lost spirits and reapers, trying to find something – anything – to work with. He read about ghost possession and sickness, about resurrection and rituals, and nothing sounded like anything he wanted to work with. He knew Dean would refuse to cooperate with any kind of witchcraft or other supernatural alternatives – he’d always hated what they’d hunted, bought into Dad’s black-and-white dogma without so much as an eyelash-flutter of protest – and frankly, Sam was afraid to let himself consider the costs of what some of the rituals required.   
  
But that left Sam wondering how Dean had managed to become a spirit in the first place. From what he had read thus far, reapers collected souls and moved them to the next world…how had Dean escaped if the reaper was actually _after_ him? Surely something as powerful as Death itself couldn’t have been outsmarted, even by someone as charismatic and clever as Dean.   
  
The hardest part of all of this was that Sam couldn’t figure out whether to talk to Bobby about it. Surely Dean would have gone to Bobby for a problem like this, but Bobby was too smart to allow Sam to keep Dean around. Bobby knew too much, had seen too much in all his years as a hunter to just let a spirit wander loose. He’d insist Dean’s body be burned and Dean’s spirit would be banished, just like every other angry spirit they’d ever hunted.   
  
But Dean wasn’t every other angry spirit they’d ever hunted. He was Sam’s brother, the only other carrier of John and Mary Winchester’s blood and legacy in the world. He was Dean.   
  
One night Sam decided to ask Dean directly.    
  
:::  
  
Dean was in the guest room upstairs trying to _calmly_ pick up an (ugly and unsentimental) urn when Sam walked into the room and shut the door. He looked around, seemed to meet Dean’s eyes once before looking down. He had the damn Ouija board again, and as much as the sight of it still made Dean feel like a little girl, he was decidedly happy that his stupid brother had finally remembered it and would be able to talk to Sammy again.   
  
Sam sat on the floor, too-long legs folded together as well as he could make them and back hunched over as he set up the board.   
  
“I know you still think this is dumb,” he was murmuring, and Dean was glad to hear his voice and know it was directed at him. “But it worked before, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t work again, right?” He didn’t sound completely convinced himself, but Dean complied and sat across from him anyway, trying to show his support even though Sam couldn’t see his effort.   
  
Sam laid his fingers gently on the little wooden triangle and looked up and around nervously, like maybe he felt silly. Dean’s heart yearned to reach out for him, to tell him he was right here, Sam wasn’t imagining things. But he just placed his fingers on, too, and prayed this would work again.   
  
That resonating power was in his fingertips in a way it hadn’t the time in the hospital. Dean didn’t know if this was also related to the absence of his body or if this was some spirit-world prize for sticking around so long, but he bit his lip and tried to move the thing. It was hard, but he managed to slide the indicator over the letters S-A-M-Y. He wasn’t sure how to show double letters, but he figured Sammy was smart enough to figure it out.   
  
Sam’s face split like it had been cut into a huge smile, bigger than any Dean had seen since before Dad had come back. Dean grinned in response, but Sam’s eyes were transfixed on the board and he couldn’t see.   
  
Oh yeah, and Dean was invisible. Shit.   
  
“Dean,” Sammy breathed, shoulders relaxing as he sighed and laughed a little in relief, still-bruised eye crinkling in a way Dean knew must have been a little painful, though he doubted Sammy noticed at that moment. “I knew you were here. You keep showing me, but I just…”   
  
The broken stuff. Sam had seen. Dean felt inexplicably embarrassed.   
  
Sam studied the board for a moment and Dean stayed very still, waiting to hear a question. His hearing was sharper now that they were hunched together around the Ouija board, but he still listened carefully, knowing everything was unsure in this delicate new form.   
  
Sam took a breath, bracing himself before speaking again.   
  
“Dean, how are you here? You said before that there was a reaper after you, so how are you still here if your body’s…”   
  
Sam choked then and stared even harder at his fingers, blinking rapidly. Dean pressed hard on the little wooden heart and spelled, C-H-O-S-E. He knew one-word answers wouldn’t be enough for Sammy (although paragraphs had never seemed to satisfy him either), but it took such effort to push the damn thing right now that it would have to do.   
  
Dean Winchester, never enough.   
  
Sam stared at the letters (and Dean could almost see him spelling them into a word in his head), then looked up, Dean would have sworn, right into his eyes.   
  
“You had a choice, and you stayed here?” Sam asked, voice quavering between angry and incredulous. “But Dean, you…you should have…” He swallowed and puppy-eyed Dean’s invisible body. “Why would you stay? When you had a chance to rest, why…why stay?”   
  
Dean made a face that Sam couldn’t see and pushed the wood again. His genius little brother was so stupid sometimes.   
  
S-A-M-Y.   
  
Like it was even a question.   
  
And Sammy smiled sadly and shook his head. “I should’ve known.”   
  
“Damn straight you should’ve,” Dean muttered , his own voice startling and loud to him in the silence.   
  
He spelled, D-U-H.   
  
:::  
  
Sam sighed and pondered what to ask next.   
  
“Dean, what do I tell Bobby?” he asked, looking at his fingers instead of the inescapably empty air around him. It felt strange talking to what seemed like nothing, but the planchette kept moving, and if that wasn’t reason enough for Sam to believe Dean was there, the comforting warmth in his stomach certainly was. “I mean, if I say you’re here, you know he’ll make me go to the hospital and claim your body so we can burn it. I barely talked him out of it already, and – ”  
  
But the planchette was moving again, slowly and painstakingly sliding in a straight line, pulling Sam’s fingers along behind it toward “No.”   
  
Sam’s lips pressed together until his mouth was just a line. “But Dean, I…I don’t know if I can keep hiding it. He keeps giving me all this room, like he wants to let me grieve, and I – ”   
  
But the planchette – and the whole board – suddenly shook as Dean slammed down on it. The indicator was still focused on “No.”   
  
Heart thumping from the hostility of the response, Sam whispered, “Okay. Okay, Dean, just calm down.”   
  
He waited for a moment, looking for any sign that Dean was still angry, but there was nothing. He took a breath and asked, “So what can I do to help you?”  
  
Sam watched the planchette move, little round glass highlighting letters as it moved, and wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.   
  
I-M-P-A-L-A.   
  
“Dean…” He couldn’t have this conversation, he couldn’t tell Dean that his baby was, for all intents and purposes, dead. “Dean, it’s…”   
  
S-H-E.   
  
And Sam laughed. “Okay,” he said, knowing he couldn’t win.   
  
:::  
  
Bobby brought up burning the bodies the next day, as it turned out.   
  
“You know it’s the right thing, Sam,” he said, gruff voice soft and knowing. “It ain’t easy, and I know you don’t want to. But we gotta do right by them.”   
  
“No,” Sam said, back turned as he leafed through books. “I’m not burning them. If they come back, they need bodies to return to.”   
  
“They ain’t comin’ back, Sam,” Bobby said, voice incredulous. “You know as well as I do that people just don’t come back.” He narrowed his eyes and added, “And if they do, you know it’s never good news.”   
  
Sam didn’t respond for a long time, and Dean wondered if he heard anything Bobby was saying. Dean wasn’t too excited about this whole ghost thing, but he didn’t want Sammy getting involved in heavy shit for him either. Finally Sam responded, “I know more than most people.”   
  
“Which means you know how dangerous it is,” Bobby countered immediately. “I’m not about to watch you get yourself killed just because you don’t think you can hack it without your brother.”   
  
“And my dad,” Sam said, turning and raising his eyes to Bobby’s over his own shoulder, a little line between his eyebrows like Bobby had made a stupid mistake. Dean just shook his head and looked out the window at the husks of cars in the yard, spotting a piece of the Impala’s hood where she glinted in the sun behind a van.   
  
“Right.” Bobby’s voice was downright scathing now. He turned and walked to the door, yanked open the screen and walked through into the yard. “Coz you’re really thinking about your daddy right now.”   
  
:::  
  
Dean was getting better at interacting with the physical world around him, and the more he learned, the less terrifying the idea of being a spirit became.   
  
He’d learned how to make noise, but only a kind of dull, moaning yell so far. He knew how to project the sound, but hadn’t quite translated that into making words yet, and the lack of progress was discouraging. It took a lot out of him to practice, too, and getting ghost-tired sucked ass: he couldn’t move for hours, and kind of blacked out if he really overdid it. It also meant going outside so Sam and Bobby wouldn’t hear, and he didn’t like letting Sam out of his sight if he could help it. But he wasn’t about to alert Bobby to his presence by doing something as stupid as making loud, disembodied, angry-spirit noises in the middle of the night.   
  
He had wanted to try becoming visible, but the sound practice took so much out of him that he wasn’t sure he was ready. That one also required being away from Sam, since he wasn’t about to start flickering in front of his brother – he was probably already damaging him enough without the momentary hallucination factor.   
  
The worst part of all was that, as he got more and more accustomed to the way he worked as a spirit, the more he realized how much he had taken his body for granted.   
  
Dean had no physical mass, made no sound, didn’t need to eat or piss or sleep – not counting the horrible moments of _nothing_ he’d experience if he pushed himself too far during sound practice – and had no physical body from which to draw cues. He found himself still thinking in terms of “my stomach” or “my leg” and kept having to remind himself that he had neither. That sinking feeling in the space formerly occupied by his stomach, that was him feeling guilty or sad or worried; those cold shivers he felt up his back weren’t chills up his spine, it was just fear or nervousness or maybe anger.   
  
It was fucking weird, not having to act human anymore. No wonder so many spirits went crazy – anyone would, if they were suddenly subjected to shit like this. But Dean, lucky fucker that he was, already knew some of what was coming, so he thought he’d be able to handle it. And so far, he had.   
  
But even as the mystery and helplessness of ghosthood were reduced, the settling understanding of eternity was starting to eat at him.   
  
He’d only been…dead…for about three weeks, he had all this learning and practicing to keep him occupied, and Sam was with him. As far out of his comfort zone he had been thus far thrown, at least Dean hadn’t gotten bored. The main thing he would eventually have to fear was boredom, idle hands.   
  
And he had no idea what eternity would be like once Sam left.   
  
Because if there was one thing Dean knew for sure, even now, it was that as much as he would try to protect him, Sammy would eventually leave again.   
  
:::  
  
“Dean, I can’t fix your car,” Sam said, voice pained like this was the hardest thing he’d ever had to say. He’d been looking through some of the different manuals scattered throughout Bobby’s house in between researching spirit lore, and it was like reading Greek (which, actually, he’d studied a little once, so it was actually kind of worse). None of it meant anything to him, and it was the one thing Dean had actually asked of him.   
  
There was no answer on the Ouija board for a long time, and Sam thought for a moment that Dean had left. But then the planchette moved and Dean said, M-E.   
  
Sam coughed a little laugh of remorse and said, “Dean…you can’t fix the car. Even if you were here, it’s… _she’s_ too badly broken. No one could ever fix her.”   
  
Dean said again, M-E.   
  
Sam shook his head and asked, “How?”   
  
And Dean said, T-R-U-S-T-M-E-S-A-M-Y.   
  
:::  
  
Dean was already outside and waiting when Sam lay on the gravel of the salvage yard and used his long legs to propel himself horizontally beneath the undercarriage of the Impala. He was trying to keep his mind busy by categorizing the shrinking, cringing feeling in his lower middle area – he once might have called it a heavy pain in his gut, but he wasn’t quite sure anymore.   
  
The entire frame of the car was destroyed, twisted and bent so it was barely recognizable. The engine, all the car’s inner components, really, were mangled or in pieces. Dean had been driving this car for over ten years, living in the backseat for longer than that, and now here it lay, barely an echo of what it used to be.   
  
It’s scary how inanimate objects can make you think about yourself.   
  
Dean watched Sam reach out a hand and run his fingers gently over the undercarriage, not quite touching the jagged pieces of metal, as if trying to assess the damage but seeing only the broken mess Dean’s gorgeous car had once been.   
  
Yeah, that cold curl of wet heat swirling up from just above his navel and into the space between his shoulders? That was mourning.    
  
Mourning happens when it’s over.   
  
Dean settled his hand over Sammy’s where it was almost touching the car, tried his best to wrap his fingers around Sammy’s, thread through and still them.  _Stop,_ he tried to whisper, _It’s pointless, Sammy. We both have to let her go._  
  
Sammy’s shoulder twitched. High-pitched buzzing next to your ear tended to bug, after all.   
  
Better than moaning, Dean supposed.   
  
:::  
  
Sam refused to give up on the car for another three weeks. Every day he’d wake up, eat a stiff and silent breakfast with Bobby, then walk out into the piercing early-morning sun to slide under the car. He had all Bobby’s Chevy manuals and muscle car magazines, plus the biggest and most complicated toolbox he could drag out, and he knew there had to be a way. He started to learn the car’s components and pieces, but he couldn’t figure out how to fix them, only discover newer and more gut-wrenching ways in which they were now broken.   
  
He had felt Dean with him under the car, and he felt like he knew Dean had tried to speak to him, but there was just no way for him to accept what he thought Dean had said. Sam knew Dean would never have given up on the Impala, would have been out here every day for however many weeks, months, years it took to fix the damn thing and get her on the road again. She was theirs, their one and only irremovable foundation, and Dean would have died rather than jeopardize that.   
  
Sam’s stomach clenched tightly and a lump formed in his throat for the first time in weeks. He kind of had, hadn’t he? Died before leaving the Impala…  
  
Sam shook his head and concentrated on the part he was diagnosing (and trying to identify). He’d been driving the night of the crash, and regardless of what Dean had said, he had to fix the car. He couldn’t give up. He had to fight for her.   
  
Sam remembered his apartment with Jess at Stanford, and he was sure Dean remembered their old house in Lawrence before the fire. Home made you feel safe, made you warm when you were cold and comforted you when you were alone. Dean needed a home. The Impala had been their home. And Sam just couldn’t leave her.   
  
:::  
  
Sam was fascinating to watch now that Dean didn’t ever have to look away. Besides being able to look out for him in ways he’d never been afforded alive, Dean also had the chance now to see and catalogue everything Sam did, like he felt he hadn’t been able to since they were kids.   
  
Back then, Sammy had cried and laughed and raged indiscriminately, and Dean was right there with him to hold him close or calm him down. Sammy was his to protect, and he felt like there was nothing that could ever break them apart.   
  
But Sammy had grown into Sam, with all his pumping hormones and resentment of Dad, and he’d drawn himself inward and away from Dean, into a shell of teenage angst Dean could rarely penetrate. And when Stanford happened, and then Jess and hunting all over again, Dean had been amazed at how his brother’s walls had grown, high and strong enough to rival his own.   
  
Only now, instead of just internalizing everything he was feeling to keep for himself, that shell had been refortified to keep others out.   
  
Dean knew that shell well – it was too hard to get close, to give in to the need for affection and comfort, with the kind of lives they led. His time spent with Cassie proved just how impossible it really was, how no one else would ever understand them, and even when he found her again and she believed, the damage was done and so was he.   
  
Losing Jessica must have been even harder on Sam – he hadn’t shared his past with her, the past that had gotten her killed. Though Dean wholeheartedly believed it was none of Sam’s fault, the kind of guilt he knew Sam still carried…Dean didn’t know how his brother shouldered it. He knew he’d never be able to bear a burden anything like that.   
  
But now, after all the time spent learning Sam’s triggers and how those walls worked, Dean found himself overrun with opportunities to peek in on Sam’s emotions. Whenever Bobby came too close to the truth, he could watch the muscles in Sam’s jaw tense as he lied and stalled and covered, color rising a little in his cheeks along with _guilt_ and _shame_. He could catch him in the moments of laughter he occasionally found, could watch with a hollow pang in his chest how he almost always stopped himself and schooled his face and body back into one of frustration and mourning (and not always when Bobby was around).   
  
And once, he had walked into the guest room after successfully sweeping up the stairs in one go and spotted Sam standing at the mirror, staring at himself with a perplexing combination of joy and sorrow on his face. When Dean had sidled up behind him, he had realized that Sam was wearing his necklace. Dean had looked down at his own chest, where the phantom image of the amulet lay nestled against his breastbone, then up to where the real thing was straining against Sam’s rippling pectoral.   
  
Sam’s lips had been pressed together hard, like he really had no idea what to do with his face. His hand had sneaked its way up to brush it with his fingers, holding it delicately and turning it to catch the light differently.   
  
Dean had knitted his brows as he watched, feeling strangely forlorn, but he’d looked up into the mirror, into the reflection Sam couldn’t see, and just stared for a while, little pieces of him breaking apart as he looked at the brothers Winchester, side by side in the piece of dusty glass like they couldn’t be in real life anymore, wishing that Sam might, just for a moment, catch his eye in their reflection.   
  
But Sam hadn’t seen him, had simply ripped the necklace over his head and tossed it back into his duffel, muttering something that sounded something like _no_ and _Dean’s_.   
  
So Dean got to relearn his brother, too, all his quirks and looks and moves, without having to ever look away. It was a whirlwind, but Dean wouldn’t have had it any different.   
  
Except at night.   
  
It hurt too much to watch Sam cry himself to sleep. It wasn’t every night, wasn’t even particularly often, but every time he did, Dean could catch his own name or their father’s on Sam’s grief-soaked tongue, murmured apologies wet with sincerity, desperate pleas for forgiveness he didn’t need. It was nights like these that had inspired Dean to try learning to touch, but unless he wanted to strike out and hit Sam with his hand or some object he could throw, there was nothing he could do for him. Dean just sat at the edge of the bed, never shifting the mattress, never touching…just staring and whispering to him.   
  
 _It’s okay, Sammy,_ he’d try to say.  _Mom used to say that angels were watching over us. I don’t know if she was right, but…_  He tried to run his fingers through his little brother’s unruly hair, but they only disappeared through his scalp and made him squirm and shiver as he cried. Dean pursed his lips (still no clue how to reclassify that one – determination? denial? ) and continued, _But I am._ He looked at Sammy and tried with all his might to project how much he meant his words.   
  
 _I’m here, Sammy. I’m here._  
  
:::  
  
Sam rolled over in Bobby’s guest bed, tears smudged all the way down his face unapologetically in the gloom, and looked up into what should have been an empty corner. If he saw a flash of green, a moment of full lips and cheekbones, it was only mourning and remembrance, echoes of his nightmare. Nothing there.

:::

Without the burden of the Impala bearing down on him, Sam seemed freer, like he was carrying less weight and could breathe a little easier. It made Dean happy to see his little brother acting like his old self again, even if he only did it when no one else was around – Sam still never opened up around Bobby – and only Dean could see. It was the best Dean had felt since dying, seeing his Sammy toss smiles into the wind without realizing and not immediately covering them with a double-dose of grief. 

But the best moment was when Bobby mentioned a hunt during breakfast, and Sam accepted. 

“Heard about a case in Medford needs lookin’ into,” Bobby said casually as he bit into his eggs. “Families being killed in their beds with the kids left alive.” He looked up at Sam from beneath the rim of his cap. “Interested?”

Sam’s head lifted from his plate and his rounded shoulders adjusted slightly as he sat up straight and tall. He’d done the same thing with Dad until he was about twelve, sitting up and listening, trying to prove that he could be as good a hunter as Dad or Dean. 

Dean smiled and shook his head at the memory – that was a lifetime ago now, back when Sam still worshipped him. Oh, how times had changed. 

“Yeah,” Sam answered, hazel eyes sparkling with the dim light of the room and all the earnestness he could muster. “Yeah, I can check that out.” 

Bobby pushed away from the table and sifted through his piles for a moment, came back to the table with what looked like an old day-planner in his hands. Dean looked ungracefully – invisibly – over his shoulder and saw dozens of names, maybe a hundred or more, along with phone numbers and addresses and other important information scribbled in its pages. 

“You ain’t never been on a hunt alone before,” Bobby murmured as he flipped the pages faster than Dean could read, “so I’m gonna send you on over to Harvelle’s in Nebraska before you take off. They should have some more details about the case for ya there, too.” 

Sam’s eyebrows lifted and he nearly snorted. “Bobby? I’ve been hunting since I was  _nine_. I think I can figure it out.” 

Bobby let the book fall heavily beside Sam’s plate. “I’m not about to let another Winchester’s death be on my head,” he said, eyes flashing. “You go to Harvelle’s and pick up what they got, or I ain’t lendin’ you the car you’ll need to get you there.” He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side. “How’s that sound, princess?” 

Sam shrank a little in his chair, looking humbled but still sure. 

“Yes, sir,” Sam breathed, and Bobby got up to wash his plate. Dean watched Bobby’s retreating gait then grinned smarmily at his brother. 

“Dude, you just got fuckin’ owned,” he said, voice all jovial with happy memories. 

Sam shifted uncomfortably, unhearing, then retrieved his cell phone from his pocket and dialed the number. 

:::

The car Bobby wound up lending to Sam was a beat up Dodge Caravan, and Dean winced as he settled into the passenger seat. 

“I feel like a freaking soccer mom,” he whined, wishing Sam could hear his brilliantly witty commentary, but really just trying to stave off the sadness of being in a car other than his beloved Chevy. After Sam told Bobby to sell her parts for scrap, Dean had been pointedly avoiding going out into the yard, knowing not seeing the Impala out there would only make him feel heavy where his heart used to beat, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it felt like to cry as a goddamn ghost. 

But when Sam looped the chord of his necklace around the rearview mirror, letting it dangle and swing there as they drove, the heaviness turned into a watery heat that threatened to spill over his cheeks. 

It was only after Sam pulled the Dodge into the Roadhouse parking lot that Dean remembered he probably  _couldn’t_  actually cry – not having a body, he probably didn’t have any moisture in him to pour out. The thought was oddly comforting.

:::

It was late, the whole place was lit only with a few old, yellow lights above the bar – which provided not only atmosphere, but ample privacy for the small number of hunters gathered together to clean their guns in relative peace. The only sounds other than the scraping of metal were the clinking of glasses and the classic rock coiling out of a jukebox in the corner. 

Sam and Dean walked up to the bar – shoulder to shoulder though no one else could see – and Sam sat on a barstool, looking from the young blonde thing pouring and passing out beers and the sexy brunette handling tequila and whiskey like he wasn’t sure whom to approach. Dean shook his head and cast his gaze about the room instead. 

“So what’ll it be, handsome?” the blonde one asked Sam, and Dean turned around. She was hot, but total jailbait, even if not on paper. Totally his type once, especially considering the way she angled her hips toward Sam but kept her shoulders back, her chest on display even in her conservative black tank top. Feisty. Dean had liked that. Once. 

Sam stammered a little and Dean scrubbed his own face with his hand in embarrassment. “Uh, actually I’m looking for someone.” Sam’s eyes darted around at the hunters dotting the room, then asked, “Can I please speak to Harvelle? It’s for a case.” 

The blonde’s eyebrows went high and her eyes half-lidded, like she was looking at an idiot – little did she know how much she looked like one, or how much a quickly-angering spirit  _really_  wanted to sock her in the face – then she looked away from Sammy and called, “Mom!” 

Sam and Dean both looked up, startled, and watched as the sexy brunette made her way over, skillful fingers settling her assorted bottles on their shelves. She looked to the blonde, who nodded to Sam and smiled before walking away with an exaggerated swish-swish of her tiny hips. The brunette turned to Sam, obviously sizing him up, then asked, “Sam Winchester?” 

Sam straightened on the too-small barstool, flustered, and nodded once before extending his hand. “Nice to meet you.” He pursed his lips for a moment, then asked, “Harvelle?”

“Ellen,” the woman answered as she shook Sam’s hand, a warm smile on her face. She looked weathered, but strong and sure in ways that would have made Dean stand up and notice. Once. “Ellen Harvelle. Used to run the place with my husband, and now it’s just me and my daughter Jo.” She smiled again as she released Sam’s hand and leaned her weight on the counter. “It’s a common mistake.” 

Sam’s eyebrows shot up through his bangs at her words, his face as innocent as he could make it. “What is?” 

“Expecting a man,” Ellen said coolly, that smile firmly in place. It was genuine, the joy of watching a newbie take his first steps. She’d been around for a while, seen this a lot, and she was fond of it. Dean approved. 

 “I’m sorry,” Sam apologized earnestly. “I just wasn’t told.” She waved a hand, her smile becoming a smirk as she assured him not to worry. Sam laughed with her nervously, and Dean couldn’t place the hint of emotion in his lower stomach as he watched. 

Ellen’s face turned somber then, and she looked Sam hard in the eye suddenly, her deep brown eyes wanting to swallow his. “Winchester…” she breathed, then added, “I’m so sorry for your loss. John was like family once.” Once. “We were all sorry to hear he passed.” 

Sam’s eyes fell to his hands on the counter for a moment, and Dean reached out for his shoulder. He passed through it like smoke, and Sam twitched a little with the cold. 

“And your brother, right?” Ellen asked quietly, knowing she was on delicate ground. “Dean?” 

Sam stiffened a little, but he straightened at the sound of Dean’s name. “Thank you,” he said, eyes bright again, though maybe a little manic. Dean fought the urge to really try to touch him. “Really. It’s good to know they’re missed. They were damn good hunters.” 

Dean watched as Ellen registered the look in Sam’s eyes, saw her brow crease and her lips tighten, but she never said anything. And as glad as Dean couldn’t help being that Sam was still safe, he was also a little pissed that the bitch hadn’t bothered to say something. Maybe they’d just met, and maybe she didn’t think it was her place to say, but in this line of work, you don’t just ignore signs like the ones Sam was giving. 

At least, you don’t ignore signs like that and then hand them a case file. 

“Medford, Wisconsin,” she said, retrieving a manila folder from behind the liquor bottles and slipping it into Sam’s hand. “Series of murders in which families are killed in their beds – ” 

“But the kids are left unharmed,” Sam finished, opening the folder right there on the bar and leafing through the papers inside. “Who put this file together?” 

“I did,” Ellen said simply, her eyebrows rising when Sam looked up at her skeptically. “My husband was a hunter way back when, and I grew up around it. Don’t look so damn surprised.” 

Sam smiled, wincing. “Sorry.” He read through a few of the papers, then stopped and looked back at Ellen incredulously. “Wait…they’re saying it’s a killer clown?” 

Dean barked a laugh he couldn’t hold in, and tried not to feel too bad when the roadhouse door suddenly slammed shut. 

:::

Sam killed the evil clown – turned out to be a Rakshasa, which Dean now officially wished he didn’t know – and damn it if Dean wasn’t proud of him. Sammy was a full-fledged hunter, now, taking on and solving his first case. He sincerely wished he could buy his little brother a beer, but hey, the limitations of spirithood were many. 

But God, Dean had hated watching Sam work. He’d done everything just like he would have had Dean or Dad been there to guide him, and Dean knew he’d handled himself and the fucking Rakshasa the way any skilled hunter hoped to be able to. He was strong, smart, and agile – a capable hunter. 

But he was Dean’s little brother, and Dean was a motherfucking ghost with absolutely no way to save him if something happened to him. And Dean  _hated_  it. 

They drove back to Bobby’s that night, and Dean watched Sam sleep harder than he’d slept since Dean died. Dean paced around the room, occasionally tried to touch things properly, and watched Sam. Finally, after four hours of no nightmares, Dean sat on the bed, watched Sammy some more, then gave in and lay down with him. He didn’t get close enough to touch – last thing he wanted was to startle Sam awake with cold all down his back – but as close as he could get. Dean had to protect him. It was his job, his only job – especially now, when he had no excuse to be doing anything but. 

Dean sighed as he tried to settle his metaphysical ass into Bobby’s guest bed. He had always known he’d have to let Sammy grow up – and knowing the life they led, he’d also known it wouldn’t be easy – but fuck, he’d never expected to be sitting on the sidelines, forced to watch him sink or swim and powerless to help him. This was supposed to be  _their_  war now – looking for Dad and fighting, with or without him, for answers, for  _good_. 

They were brothers, they were hunters, and they were becoming equals. Dean should be there to guide him, not just lying here, cold and worthless, trying his best not to wake his baby brother. 

Sam shifted in his sleep.  Sammy stabbed a beastie in its heart today with a brass pipe, all by himself. His baby brother…who wasn’t a baby anymore. 

Dean spent the night memorizing the patterns and curls in Sam’s hair. 

:::

That morning, when Sam got in the shower and Dean convinced himself nothing bad would happen to him in there either, he tried to pick up the book Sammy had left by the bed the night before they left for Medford. 

It worked. 

He couldn’t feel the book in his hand, couldn’t feel the rough texture of the cover between his fingers. He only felt that buzzing, pulsating energy he’d felt when he’d touched the Ouija board indicator – something almost magnetic in his touch, tingling and warm like electricity as it flowed through him and into the book. 

Dean stared at it for a long time. He hadn’t expected it to work, hadn’t really been trying after so many failed attempts, and frankly he was a little scared. What if he could only throw it now? Not only would Sammy kill him for hurting his book (funny how you don’t think about how stupid phrases like that sound when you’re alive), but it might just prove…

Dean concentrated with all his might on the book in his hand, on the nightstand four inches below it, trying to  _gently_   _replace_  it. The moment his fingers made contact with the surface, the book fell with a thump – but it was less than half an inch from the table by then, anyway. 

“Son of a bitch,” Dean whispered to himself, an incredulous smile spreading on his face. It was a fucking start. 

:::

Sam kept hunting, taking a running car from Bobby’s yard and crossing the country to the next case. And every time, Dean would climb into the seat next to him, and while they travelled Dean would practice. After so much discouragement early on, he’d been starting to worry that the only way he would ever progress was by becoming violent, and Dean would rather be useless than become a monster. But since lifting the book almost without effort, he knew he could do it with just a little good, old-fashioned training. 

He spent hours during a trip to Montana trying to get his fingers around the latch to the glove box, and once he got it open (on the way back), he used another several hours lifting the ID box out of it. He twirled each fake in his fingers, relearning the dexterity hunting had taught him. You’d think almost twenty years of training would fucking cross over into the afterlife with you, but this was apparently a whole different ballgame. 

Dean knew it was freaking Sam out a little, watching things float and fall and spin in the passenger seat seemingly by themselves. It wasn’t like Sam didn’t know Dean was there, but was hard to ignore the incredulous, sometimes watery stares from the driver’s seat – and even harder to repress the sinking feeling of guilt every time he noticed it. Dean needed to feel the pride swelling in his chest (and know it was well-deserved) just to keep trying. It would all be worth it eventually. 

:::

The four books and glass of water piled neatly in Dean’s hands crashed to the floor when Sammy started to thrash, entangling sheets in his long legs and throwing pillows as he moaned with pain. This wasn’t like the other nightmares; this was something else, something more sinister than guilt manifested in dreams. 

“Sammy!” Dean called, reaching out unthinkingly to shake him awake. “Sammy, wake up! Wake up!” 

He only remembered that he couldn’t actually touch him when he could feel the skin of Sam’s bare shoulder between his fingers. 

Before Dean could really start to take in the implications of the touch, Sam was awake and staring around the room, fear and confusion evident in his eyes and not only from the dream. He looked down at his shoulder with wide, wet eyes, apparently feeling Dean’s hand there as much as Dean did. There was still that barrier of ghostly electricity pulsing just a fraction of an inch from Dean’s fingers preventing Dean from feeling the warmth and life of Sam’s heartbeat, but it was solid and unmistakably real. Dean squeezed gently, and Sam visibly relaxed under his fingers. 

“Dean…” he whispered, like he knew there would be no response and was dreading the impending silence. 

“I’m here, Sammy,” Dean said, voice as firm and clear as he could make it, praying Sam might hear. But Sam just deflated a little and leaned into Dean’s hand. 

“I had another vision, Dean. I…I think we need help.” 

:::

The road whizzed by as another of Bobby’s cars – a ’71 Chevelle this time, usually Bobby’s own – sped down the highway, Sam at the wheel. Bobby had suggested they go to the Roadhouse to see Ellen’s friend Ash, who was apparently a genius at tracking demons, to figure out where the hell Sam’s dream was trying to lead him. It was worth a shot, considering all he had to work with on his own was a gun store murder-suicide and a bus company logo. 

But they’d gotten on the road as soon as he’d settled down after his vision, so Sam’s eyes were burning and heavy as the sun started to rise over the Nebraska horizon. Sam scrubbed at his face and tried to open his eyes wider at the road. He’d never had to drive right after a premonition before. Dean had always insisted, letting Sam relax and talk – but partly, Sam knew, because it gave Dean a sense of control in an out-of-control situation. 

Sam’s head gave an angry throb, and as he threw his head back into the headrest, his eyes fell on Dean’s amulet, vibrating and swaying softly with the motion of the car. God, it would have been nice to let Dean take the wheel from him right now, telling him how it wasn’t safe. 

Sam’s gaze flickered to the passenger seat (where, thankfully, nothing was floating – he was glad Dean was learning, but it didn’t make it any easier to watch things flying about the cab) and his mind wandered away from his nightmare…and his stomach clenched suddenly, making him feel a little nauseous and grip the steering wheel a little harder. 

He’d been deliberately trying not to think about the few moments after his premonition, before Bobby came in and set him on the road. He’d seen Bobby notice the well-removed pile of fallen books as he came in, felt his wrinkled old-man hand tighten around his bicep and banish the tingling sensation from his shoulder, watched Bobby’s body shiver and his eyes dart around. 

Because Dean had been there. Sam had felt  _Dean’s hand_  on his shoulder before Bobby ever got there, the vague outline of fingers where no skin was touching him, that weird pins-and-needles sensation you get when your leg falls asleep pressed into his flesh with such urgency and fear that it couldn’t have been anyone else. And frightened as he’d been of the nightmare – of gunfire and blood on the walls – he had felt instantly safe and protected when he felt Dean’s presence. 

He sighed tiredly, clutching the unfamiliar steering wheel and feeling a sudden pang of longing for the Impala. His brother’s baby, a family heirloom he wished to God he could have fixed and kept with him as this journey continued. 

“It feels weird,” Sam said to the windshield, glancing to the vacant passenger seat, “driving another Chevy. The Impala…she was one of a kind. She was ours.” He smiled sadly and reflected on all the years they’d spent in the damn thing, wishing for the umpteenth time that he could remember the six months of his infancy before the fire. 

But mostly, he waited for a response from Dean. Because he couldn’t see him, Sam was never officially certain that Dean was even there – for all he knew, Dean might have freaked and decided to sit this one out – and he forced himself not to hold his breath. 

When met with silence, Sam sighed again and leaned back heavily in his seat, disappointed, one hand dropping from the wheel and flopping into his lap, trying to keep his heavy eyelids from falling shut and getting him killed. 

A loud, sudden sound burst into Sam’s drowsy head, and he grabbed at the wheel with both hands, correcting the swerve that would have killed any cars also travelling this early. He searched the cab for the noise, confused and panting heavily, and realized it was the radio. 

The radio erratically scanning stations. 

The radio that had turned on  _all by itself_. 

The radio that had now stopped on a station playing the last verse of “Achilles Last Stand.” 

Sam choked back tears as he tightened his grip on the steering wheel, long fingers curling around far enough to cut his fingernails into his palm around it. And he smiled. 

“I hear you, Dean,” he said. “I hear you.” 

:::

Ash tracked the bus logo Sam drew for him with some kind of crazy computer software Dean had trouble even looking at and told them to go to Guthrie, Oklahoma. There, Sam tracked down a guy – Andy Gallagher – who could manipulate people into doing anything he wanted, just by  _asking_. Dean didn’t like it, knew he should have felt his trigger finger twitching as soon as he saw him, but…Andy was such a goddamn good guy, Dean just didn’t have it in him to hate him. 

Sam went to the gun store and managed to keep the gunman out of it, then watched him answer the phone and promptly step in front of a bus. Dean held onto Sammy as the ambulance took the body away, let him rock and cry and feel guilty regardless that it wasn’t his fault. 

As bad as Dean felt for the guy, the only thing he could focus on was the fact that he was holding Sam, arms wrapped around his shoulders and chest pressed flush against Sam’s back. Protecting him, keeping him safe, just like he should be. And although he couldn’t quite feel Sam’s clothes or skin or tears through the otherworldly electrical field separating them, it made him feel safe, too. 

Sam had another vision, a lady this time, dousing herself with gasoline before touching her car’s cigarette lighter to her coat. Sam couldn’t get to her in time – showed up to the scene at the same time as the fire trucks – but Dean knew he saw the pattern: Sam said both victims had received phone calls only moments before their deaths and were told to kill themselves. It could only be Andy. 

And Sam – Dean’s geek brother Sammy, who’d cried over clowns and made Dean double check his closets and under his beds until he was twelve – walked straight up to Andy’s sweet-ass van, yanked open the door, and put two bullets in his head. The little pothead probably hadn’t been able to see more than an outline of Sam through the smoke. 

Dean couldn’t remember having ever been afraid of his brother. But they say there’s a first time for everything. 

:::

Sam had another vision, a girl in a nightgown leaping off the edge of a dam. Some frenzied digging proved Andy had a twin named Anson Weems and that he also apparently had a keen knowledge of the Force. Sam sniped him and saved the girl from jumping, and they left town at breakneck speed, never pausing to figure out a goddamn thing. 

:::

Dean shouted and screamed until he had run out of ideas how to get Sam’s attention. 

“What the  _fuck_ , Sam? That was a human being back there!” 

Sam never took his eyes from the road, either because Dean was a motherfucking  _ghost_  and couldn’t talk or because Sam was a stubborn bastard and refused to listen. 

“This isn’t like you, man.” 

The first was far more likely, but Dean suspected the latter nonetheless. 

“You talked to Max Miller, gave him like three second chances, but you blow this guy away?” 

The funny thing was, he used to tell Sam to save his breath. 

“What the hell happened back there, Sam?” 

Luckily, Dean had no breath to waste. 

“Sammy! Fucking answer me man!” 

Sam stared out at the road. 

Frustrated and incredibly scared, Dean grabbed for the glove box and yanked it open viciously, nearly wrenching the door from its hinges. He reached inside and just started slashing at the contents, all the badges and ID cards falling out of their box and through his lap onto the seat, onto the floor through his feet. Then he grabbed at the hard plastic of the dash and did his best to rip it from its place and throw it across the car. 

He saw the way Sam jumped, how he stared with wide, deer-in-headlights eyes at what must have looked to him like a sudden explosion and cascade of laminated paper and receipts, felt the car slow to a stop in the middle of the road – and he did not fucking care. Sam was allowed to just do what he wanted and not give a shit? Then so could Dean. Who could reprimand him now, where he was, anyway? 

This? This was  _rage_. Dean had known rage precious few times in his life, and he’d never snapped like this before (maybe because before he’d always been driving his own fucking car, and he’d never have done anything to hurt her, but  _that_  was obviously beside the point). The kind of energy humming within him every time he’d gotten a little angry since he’d died was nothing compared to the thrumming, pulsating  _power_  in him now. 

And honestly? It felt fucking fantastic. 

“Dean?” 

Sam’s voice was so small, not twenty-three but maybe eight, and it pierced right through all Dean’s anger and violence and fear. He turned his head and looked at Sam, panting purely out of habit, half expecting a child to be sitting in the driver’s seat beside him. His little brother’s face was crestfallen, slack with guilt and sadness and shock, and Dean – nearly literally – deflated. He felt empty, vacant inside, the intense energy from before vanished, leaving a hole. 

Dean’s chest swelled and his stomach hurt, and if he’d been able tears would have streamed down his face. But all he could do was heave his shoulders and gasp for air he didn’t need. He hung his head and saw the fake IDs strewn on the floor, passing through him like nothing, a glaring reminder of what he’d done. 

He looked back up at Sam, and whispered, “Sammy…Sammy I…” 

And Sam sat up a little straighter, tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. Then his eyes flew wide and he leapt back in his seat, slamming into the door and cracking his knee on the steering wheel. 

Dean’s brow furrowed as he looked at him, confusion a moment’s respite from the shame. “Sammy, what’s wrong?” he whispered, forgetting again that Sam wouldn’t hear. 

But Sam answered. 

“Dean…” His voice was trembling, still childlike but tinged now with the weight of having seen too much. “Dean, I…I can see you!” 

Dean’s eyes widened and he looked down at himself like an idiot, not thinking about the fact that he’d  _always_  been able to see  _himself_. But when he stared down at his hands, his legs, his chest, he saw that Sam was right. He was visible now. He couldn’t have described the difference if he’d tried, but he felt it – an intangible something that meant that yes, he was visible, maybe even solid. 

He lifted his head and fixed his eyes on Sammy’s, which had lost all traces of fear and been filled instead with what Dean could only have called longing. 

“Sammy?”

“Dean.” Sam’s voice was a sigh, and his lips pulled into a small smile. His shoulders relaxed and he seemed to melt a little into the cracked leather seat, content to just stare at Dean’s face. There was a time, before, when Dean would have blanched at this much eye contact, declared it a chick-flick moment and teased Sammy until he sulked out the window again. 

But this wasn’t before. This was a completely new and different time, and Dean had gone months now without being seen – hell, with hardly any acknowledgement – and having Sam’s hazel eyes actually focused on him was making him feel more real and important than he’d felt in…

Well, probably years, actually. 

Sam lifted a tentative hand in question, and Dean just nodded. He didn’t know what would happen, how he had become visible or how he was maintaining it, but if he was solid, even for a moment, all he wanted was to feel Sam’s touch. Sam reached forward, stretching his arm slowly toward Dean’s face – Dean tracking his long, callused fingers as they approached – and brushed Dean’s cheek. 

Or rather, brushed the air just  _beyond_  Dean’s cheek. 

Dean could have died all over again for all the disappointment crashing down on him as he felt Sam pass through him. But Sam’s face was intrigued – though now streaked with a few rogue tears – as his fingers turned and twisted through Dean’s face, and Dean couldn’t fight a smirk at that, no matter how wobbly it was. Sammy was doing his geek thing, analyzing a ghost. 

“It’s so weird…” he muttered, eyes raking over Dean’s eyebrows and nose, fingers sliding through the ozone that was Dean’s cheek, neck, shoulder. “It’s cold, but…there’s like, static.” He pulled his fingers free and looked at them like they weren’t his anymore, flexed them, then looked past them at Dean’s face. “What the hell are you made of?” 

Dean shrugged and, voice cracking, answered, “Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails?” 

Sam huffed a laugh, caught off guard. “Right,” he said, little boy grin on his face, white teeth all gleaming in the fading afternoon light. At that moment, Dean could have argued that face to be the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, as long as it was directed at him. 

Then Sam pressed his lips together, smile tight now as his eyes turned sad. “God, I’ve missed you, Dean.” 

Dean felt pressure under his eyes and in his throat, the closest he got to actual tears anymore. “I’ve been right here, Sammy. I never went anywhere.” 

Sam’s smile widened for just a moment before it fell completely. “Dean?” he asked, eyes frantically searching Dean’s eyes. “Dean!” 

“What is it, Sam?” Dean asked, but he knew Sam couldn’t hear him. He felt himself flickering, losing whatever it was that made him visible, and when he looked down at his legs he actually saw them disappearing. He looked back up at Sam, searching for his gaze, but his eyes were darting all over Dean’s side of the car. Unseeing. 

“No…” Sam sounded broken. “No, don’t you leave me again!” 

“I’m right here, Sammy,” Dean tried to reassure him. “I’m right here.” 

Sam turned away, folded his arms over the steering wheel, and cried. 

:::

New hunt, angry spirit killing off blonde girls in Philadelphia. Sam was still driving Bobby’s Chevelle, having been loaned it indefinitely after a number of hunts kept him too far from South Dakota to bother bringing it back every time. Sam also suspected Bobby knew about Dean, and that giving him the car and the means to get out was his way of telling him he didn’t want any part of it. It hurt, feeling like he’d been cut off, but the words had never actually been said and Sam had decided not to buy into all that wordless-understanding bullshit from Bobby. So he’d just driven away, Dean’s necklace a permanent fixture on the mirror now, waving to Bobby and promising he’d return. 

Sam pulled into a motel parking lot and paid for a room with money he’d earned from Bobby at the yard (plus a little he’d hustled, he wasn’t proud of it), hauled his duffel and a box of library records to the room and walked inside – stomach pulling at the sight of the single king in the middle of the room – to settle in for research. He knew the ghost’s MO, he just needed to figure out who he was. 

But as Sam searched death records and town history, he started to think about Dean. About his face, his hair, his everything…how he’d looked exactly the same as he’d looked before he died. Sam had almost forgotten how green his eyes were, how many freckles splashed across his nose, how soft and round and red his lips looked against his pale skin. 

His stomach churned in punishment – how could he have already started to forget? 

But thoughts of Dean’s face were interrupted by just how  _angry_  his brother had gotten after Guthrie. The cardboard box they kept the IDs in now was a replacement of the wooden box Dad had given them, which Dean had actually broken; he’d nearly torn the glove box apart, and the hinges were bent, but Sam had managed to make it close properly before they got back to Bobby’s – and he’d nearly cried in relief when Bobby basically told him the Chevelle was his, because it meant Bobby wouldn’t see the damage. 

Not that Sam could really blame him – Sam had pretty much wanted to kill himself after he found out he’d shot the wrong man, couldn’t believe he’d detached himself so much that he hadn’t even tried  _talking_  to the guy, just up and shot him. He tried to tell himself it was the dreams, they had been so violent and horrific he’d just taken action without thinking, but he knew the truth. He was losing touch, falling away from who he had been just like he had after Jessica. 

The truth was, the only thing grounding him, keeping him from letting his own anger and obsession fly off the deep end, had been Dean. And being without him all this time – not seeing him, feeling him – had made him lose sight of the person he wanted to be. The good person he was with Dean. 

But as much as Sam was relieved that Dean was learning – evolving – and wanted to believe that Dean wasn’t malevolent, he couldn’t ignore that Dean was obviously getting stronger. Just like what they’d hunted before. And knowing that was starting to weigh on Sam’s conscience. 

Sam stared at the pointless painting of a log cabin on the opposite wall, dropping all pretense of research, and thought of all the spirits he’d put down in his life: all the women in white, so haunted by betrayal and tragedy; the people murdered and cursed to seek justice or revenge; the parents and children, the evildoers and saints he’d been thrown around and pinned to walls by, grabbed and choked and  _hurt_  by…

And they were all people once too. People who had lived lives, who had hobbies, interests, goals, ideas. People who had been loved. 

Dean had wanted to do right by his mom and obey his dad. He’d lived the life of a hunter and a soldier, a son and a brother. Dean had been loved by Mary, by Dad, in his way, and by Sam. And he’d always,  _always_ , protected Sam, no matter what. And that kind of devotion…that doesn’t just go away. No one just stops caring, and Dean certainly wouldn’t. 

So Dean had gotten angry and taken out a glove box. Sam had lost sight of himself and killed an innocent man. 

They weren’t even, not by a long shot. But, Sam figured as he returned to his files, it was as good a place as any for a fresh start. 

:::

Jo Harvelle showed up in Philadelphia looking for the same angry spirit as Sam (who had turned out to be H.H. Holmes, America’s first multi-murderer). Sam used her trim waist and blonde hair as bait for the damn thing and almost got her killed. Dean dashed in at the last moment and fought the thing back – just as he’d fought Tessa in the hospital before he knew who she was – while Sam and Jo set salt lines to keep him locked in his basement of horrors. Sam sent Jo on ahead before very carefully breaking the line to let Dean out. Dean was sure Jo noticed something, but she never said a word. 

It left them both uneasy. Dean could tell Sam was worried they might be found out, that Jo might go tell her mother and alert the whole hunting community that Sam Winchester was hunting with a ghost. They’d be hunted themselves if the word got out, Dean’s remains would be found and burned, Sam would be killed and so might Bobby. There was definite cause for concern, but shaky ground was no reason to cause more trouble if they’d actually gotten lucky. 

Dean was freaking out on a completely different level. He’d been fighting a spirit – one of his own, as far as any hunter was concerned – and had been trapped by a ring of salt. In all his years hunting things, he’d been the one laying the salt line, grinning as some unsuspecting ghost or demon tried to cross and was halted in its tracks, watching it writhe or grimace or sometimes even burn. He’d packed salt rounds into shotguns, and though Sam had hit him with one once, he knew that pain wouldn’t be anything like being hit with one now. He’d officially joined the ranks of the undead. And it sucked. 

:::

In Greenwood, Mississippi, four people struck deals with a crossroads demon ten years ago, and now it was sending hellhounds to collect their souls. 

“My wife.” 

Evan Hudson, a lonely man in an office, hearing barking when there was nothing there. 

“I was desperate.” 

Sam talked to the man, Dean stared out the window. 

“Julie was dying.” 

Dean could see the hellhounds from the window, barking and clawing at the house, not quite free to attack yet. 

“She had cancer, they’d stopped treatment, they were moving her into hospice, they kept saying...a matter of days.”  

They were hideous, those things. Snarling teeth, huge red eyes just like the crossroads demon’s, mottled black skin and no fur. They looked charred, beaten, tortured into a mindless ball of hatred and evil on four legs. 

“So yeah, I made the deal. And I’d do it again. I’d have died for her on the spot.” 

“Did you think of her in any of this?” Dean whispered as he stared through his self-imposed reflection at the hellhounds. “You selfish bastard, did you even consider that she would have to live without you now?” 

Sam spoke to Evan, told him he’d do his best to save him, but Dean could see his bluff. There was nothing Sam could do to save him, short of killing every hellhound that ever tried to collect on Evan’s soul. But they had no weapons they knew would work on a hellhound, and even if they did, Sam couldn’t see the hounds and neither Evan nor Dean could handle a weapon. 

Dean watched Sam pour salt and Goofer dust lines in front of the doors and windows, stood beside Sam and in front of Evan as they made their stand against the hounds, but in the end it didn’t matter. 

Evan Hudson was puppy chow, it was his own fault, and they couldn’t have done anything about it. 

And Dean? He didn’t see Evan Hudson lying there, torn to pieces in a pool of his own blood. He saw his father, gasping as his heart gave out, writhing on the hospital floor. Screaming about a cheat. 

:::

“This is about Dad, isn’t it?” Sam asked the still air around him in his motel room. 

They left Mississippi as soon as Evan was dead; Sam hadn’t been able to bear the sight of him. He’d stopped the car in Texarkana, Texas, after driving for five hours to clear his head made him almost crash into a pole, but now that he was settled he found he couldn’t sleep. Not without seeing Evan Hudson’s blank eyes and bloody chest in his head, without wishing he could have done more to save him or get rid of the demon, without thinking of Dean’s complete silence the whole drive here – he didn’t even fiddle with the radio when Sam offered it. 

And now all he could think of was Dad, dead in a hallway in a hospital in South Dakota. Dad dead of a heart attack when he was healthy as a horse. Dad screaming about a cheat just before he collapsed, an altar in the boiler room and the Colt missing. 

“You think maybe Dad made one of these deals?” he asked the ceiling. “That he was dealing with the Demon for your life when he died?” 

The room was quiet, wind outside and nothing but his breathing inside. Sam sighed, tried to get comfortable on the bed. 

“He did the right thing, you know,” Sam said as he closed his eyes. The nightmare images in his head flashed again, but he stared past them at the swirls of dark and color inside his eyelids, seeking out sleep like he’d needed for days. 

“Dad was too obsessed, too consumed with hunting. He was losing sight of what mattered. He tried to give his life for yours because he knew you’d hold our family together like he never could.” 

Sam felt himself drifting off to sleep finally, but forced his eyes open. “I miss the hell out of him, Dean. I really do.” He propped himself up on his elbows, shoulders shrugged up by his ears, looking into the darkness at nothing in particular. “But…I’m really glad you’re with me.” 

At the corner of the bed, where Sam’s feet were burrowed into the sheets, Sam felt a warm blanket of electrical current cover his ankle. He stared at where Dean was making contact, half a sleepy smile on his lips, and as he watched Dean started to appear. It wasn’t a shock like before, when he’d just suddenly appeared – it was like he faded backwards, materialized like they used to on the Enterprise – so Sam stayed put and just watched, took his brother in. 

And maybe it was just because Sam hadn’t seen Dean properly in months, but…Dean looked  _beautiful_. 

His head was bowed, staring at his hand where it rested on Sam, green eyes hidden behind long eyelashes. A small expanse of his neck was visible before it was covered by the upturned collar of Dad’s old jacket, shining and pale against the weathered leather and sprinkled with stray hairs his razor never reached. 

Sam pulled himself into a more upright position and reached for Dean, remembering the cold electricity that had swallowed his fingers the last time he’d touched him and craving it. It wasn’t how Dean normally would have felt – Sam knew every curve and contour of his brother’s body from having stitched it back together so many times – but he needed the direct contact, no however alien it felt. 

Dean raised his head and tightened his grip on Sam’s ankle, and Sam suddenly remembered spraining that same ankle playing soccer when he was fourteen. Dad had gotten pissed and forced Dean to stay home and take care of Sam instead of letting either of them hunt, and Dean had gotten bored enough that he’d let Sam have his first beer. It was a great weekend. 

Expecting a shivering charge, Sam’s heart pounded when his fingers collided with cool leather. His eyes snapped to Dean’s, met the bright green of them with surprise and anticipation, and realized that Dean’s hand on his ankle didn’t feel like pins and needles anymore: it felt like a  _hand_. 

:::

“Dean…” 

Dean leaned closer to Sammy, lifting himself from where he sat on the bed to embrace him. It was taking all the concentration he could muster to keep himself solid, he didn’t know how long it would last and wasn’t sure if he could talk, but he’d take whatever he could. 

“Oh God, Dean!” Sammy gasped as he grabbed Dean tightly and held him close. “God, I’ve missed you, man…”

It was probably the most intimate contact they’d had since they were kids, Dean draped awkwardly over Sammy’s chest and lap, molding into him like this, but neither of them cared, so starved for each other over the last few months. Dean let his eyes drop closed and just let the feel and smell of  _Sammy_  fill him up where his breath should have been, deep inside where he could feel the last sensations of pins-and-needles tingling at him, reminding him how short this moment could be. 

He pulled away, smiling when he felt Sammy resist and keep his hand determinedly resting on his hip, and looked up at his brother, desperately searching his face, trying to communicate. He was terrified to speak, afraid his solid body and image would fall apart the moment he opened his mouth, but…he’d already wasted one opportunity to speak to his brother, and who knew when he might get the chance to be this real again? Dean licked his top lip carefully, mustering courage, and started off easy. 

“Sammy?” 

Sam released a breath he must have been holding, watery smile on his face. “Dean…you can talk again.” 

Dean nodded and replied, “I don’t know for how long. It’s…it takes a lot of concentration, you know? And if I overdo it I’ll pay for it later, so…”

“Pay for it?” Sam asked urgently, eyes wide in concern and that intense, Sammy-style curiosity. “What do you – ?” 

“Just,” Dean interrupted, feeling himself going static-y inside and knowing he was pushing it, “let me talk, okay? I promise I’ll explain when I can.” 

Sam swallowed and nodded, and Dean nearly laughed when he saw a flash of his brother’s angry stubbornness in his eyes before he fought it back. 

Dean took a big breath – he’d managed to stop bothering when he was invisible, but being physically relevant seemed to be bringing back unnecessary habits – and grasped Sam’s wrist. For some reason, now he was here, this was turning into the hardest thing he’d ever had to say. 

“Sammy…” Dean began, starting somewhere familiar. “God, I wish I could have been here all this time. I could have protected you. I  _should_  have protected you.” He buried his face in the crook of Sam’s neck, taking in Sam’s smell and muscle and strength. “I’m so sorry.” 

“For what?” Sam asked. “For dying? Dean, no one could have helped that, no one…Jesus, Dean,

“Sammy, I…” He stared at the sheets for a moment, rumpled in Sam’s lap, before looking back up and directly into Sam’s eyes. “I need you to know something, okay? I…” 

“Dean?” That wasn’t Sam’s active-listening voice. “Dean, I can’t hear you.” 

Something twisted hard and fast in Dean’s chest, something that tasted like panic. “Sammy?” he called, trying to raise his voice in every way he knew how, straining against Sam as he shouted. He couldn’t let Sam go now, couldn’t bear him not to hear…

But Sam lifted the hand he’d kept on Dean’s hip and pressed it against Dean’s shoulder instead, not holding him back but anchoring and soothing him. “Dean, it’s okay. I…I’d love to hear you talk some more, but I’d rather you just be here, okay? So if you have to be quiet to stick around and be visible for me, I…I’ll take it.” 

Dean nodded, eyes leaving Sam’s for a moment to berate himself before lifting again. Those goddamn puppy dog eyes were going to be the death of him. (Oh, wait…)

 _God, Sammy…_  he thought, hoping maybe his psychic bullshit would somehow let him hear it this way.  _I just need you to hear…I don’t care if I sound like a chick, I fucking love you, Sammy. Why can’t you hear me?_  

Dean pressed himself closer, trying to figure out how to project what he was thinking into Sammy’s giant head.  _Can you hear me, Sam?_  Failing that, desperation building in him, he tried to speak again. “Sammy?” But he didn’t hear his own voice either anymore. 

“Dean, stop,” Sam said, consoling and concerned as he kneaded Dean’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Dean, it’s okay…” 

“No it’s not fucking okay!” Dean insisted in silence. He wondered what the hell he must look like, mouth working and illusory vocal chords pulled tight with no sound, and it only made him push harder to speak. 

He knew Sammy knew what he wanted to say, knew it had gone  _without_  saying their whole lives, but something had shifted in him over the last several months and he was starting to feel real fear that something could happen to him or to Sam any day now and Sam would have never heard him actually say it. And right now, staring into Sam’s anxious eyes while his voice betrayed him, he squeezed Sam’s wrist tighter, feeling the  _skin_  there, and lunged forward. 

And pressed his lips against Sam’s. 

He felt Sam’s startled breath puff against his cheek and nose, felt Sam recoil slightly and followed him, pouring all the words he literally couldn’t say into this one, desperate act. He didn’t know how Sam was going to react – for all he knew, he’d pull away and Sam would be wiping at his mouth and clawing at his phone to tell Bobby everything and burn his bones. But in lieu of his traitorous, veil-crossing voice, he had this, and he couldn’t think about consequences right now. It was the most real and pure thing he had that he could give to Sam. And God or whoever knew he would have – hell,  _had_  – given more in the past. 

He felt Sam relax against him, felt his lips soften and receive the kiss rather than holding tight against it. His hand slid from where it had gone lax against his shoulder to grip the back of his neck and hold them together. It was completely unlike any kiss Dean had ever experienced – no one moved, no one’s mouth opened or even readjusted – they just sat and took each other in. And it made Dean swell to bursting inside, some space where his lungs had been once burning with happiness. They were sharing each other, that was all. 

And they were speaking more clearly than either of them had ever done with words. 

:::

Sam felt Dean’s lips finally pull away, skin sticking just a little as he did, and when he opened his eyes, Dean was gone.

:::

Dean awoke, one might say, several days later, aching through every inch of his body in ways he hadn’t felt even after the harshest workouts Dad used to put them through. His consciousness came back in fluctuating, grainy resolution, like an old-school TV with a shitty antenna, and he stumbled around – that was the only word he could relate to feeling like this, although really it was more like stepped and flickered and fell through a wall – trying to get his bearings, and realized he was still with Sam, in a new motel room in a new state. 

Sam was on his computer, completely unaware Dean had resurfaced from the land of over-achieving ghosts. The moment Dean laid eyes on him, he felt a little fuller, a little more like he could stand and walk straight. Dean approached Sam eagerly and tried to touch him, bracing himself for failure. 

His hand fell right onto Sam’s shoulder, just as he’d intended, as a shock of static and Sam spun immediately, the gun by his hand untouched as he looked up and into what would have been about Dean’s neck. 

“Dean?” And Dean broke a little more inside, because Sam’s voice sounded wrecked. “Dean is that you?” 

But just as Dean was reaching for Sam’s shoulder to try again, a female voice called, “Sam? Who are you talking to?” 

Dean’s eyes widened to probably comical proportions as a small brunette with giant eyes emerged from the bathroom, tugging her jacket tighter about her shoulders. She looked at Sam curiously, a little anxiety apparent on her face as Sam stared so deliberately in the other direction. “Sam?” 

Sam finally turned around to look at her, though Dean could tell he barely registered her – which, if he was honest, made him feel more than a little smug. 

“Ava,” he said, “uh…” His eyes flickered to where Dean stood as he fought with himself over what the hell to do. He pressed his lips together and looked at her. “Remember the brother I told you about?” 

“Your dead ghost brother?” she asked, far too flippantly for Dean’s liking. 

Sam laughed humorlessly. “Yeah,” he answered. “Well…he’s back.” 

Ava looked around owlishly, apprehension obvious in her face. “But I thought…”

“Ava,” Sam interrupted, standing from the table and walking to her. “Dean would never hurt you, okay? We’re safe here, Gordon has no idea where we are, and with Dean back, we may have the upper hand.” He smiled his I-acknowledge-your-pain smile, and she seemed to settle. “Go get us some sodas, okay? Everything’ll be all right.” 

She walked out the door, three of Sam’s dollars in her hand, and Sam turned back to Dean, face melting instantly from soothing a victim into scared little boy. 

“Can you…?” he asked, hand gesturing vaguely. 

Dean looked down at himself, unsure after not being able to touch Sam if he should risk being visible, let alone solid, but tried anyway. For Sammy. And he was amazed by how easy it actually was to bring himself the one, once-impossible step forward into solidity. 

Sam was upon him in three strides and was pulling him in for a bear hug. Dean was surprised by how easily he’d become solid, but couldn’t really think about anything but Sammy’s arms around him. 

“It’s been weeks…” Sam said, voice cracking a little. “You were just gone. No noise, nothing. I thought…” He buried his nose in Dean’s neck and choked, “God, I thought…” 

“Shh, Sammy, it’s okay, I’m right here,” Dean soothed, fingers digging into Sam’s back and petting his hair in reassurance. It was starting to feel natural again. 

“You can talk,” Sam breathed, and Dean felt Sam’s cheeks go taut against his neck with a smile. They separated and, easy as breathing, Sam placed a quick kiss on Dean’s mouth. “Are you okay?” 

“Yeah, just kinda sore,” Dean answered, amazed at the clarity of his own voice. “Dunno what happens when I go out like that, but it sucks.” 

“Go out?” Sam asked. 

“Like a light,” Dean said. “I’m just, gone. I didn’t even know time had passed, I just, woke up with a hangover from hell and saw you.” 

Sam clasped his shoulder reassuringly and Dean grinned. Then he nodded at the door and asked, “Who’s the chick?” 

Sam looked at the door for a split second like he’d never seen one before, then answered, “Oh, Ava.  Ava Wilson. She’s another…she’s one of the demon’s kids.” Sam shifted uncomfortably, and Dean guessed he was remembering Andy. “She had a vision that a hunter named Gordon Walker killed me, so she tracked me down to warn me.” 

“Who the hell is Gordon Walker?” Dean asked, heat burning low in his belly at the idea Sam had been in danger and he hadn’t even been here. 

“Some zealot vampire hunter.” Sam grabbed Dad’s journal from the bedside table drawer and showed Dean an entry Sam had apparently made himself. “I called Ellen when Ava showed up, and she and Ash told me who and where he was. Apparently he’s a little too extreme for most hunters, only works alone and sees in complete black and white. Good or evil, no in between.” 

“So why’s he after you?” Dean asked, voice rising in fear and anger. 

Sam hung his head. “Two reasons,” he answered. “One, he found out about the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all the children like me, and he’s been picking them off all across the country. Two…” He looked back up at Dean, lips pressed into a line. “He did some checking up on me, and I don’t know how, but he knows about you.” 

The bottom dropped out of Dean’s stomach. Oh, God. Just  _existing_  was putting Sam’s life in danger. Fucking figured. 

“So…” he tried, but his voice was damnably small. “What do we do?” 

Sam shook his head. “He’s a menace, kills everything and anyone he wants and doesn’t care either way. He took out this huge nest of vampires a month or so back, but it turned out they were known to be  _vegetarians_. They hadn’t killed a human in decades.” Sam stood, looking at Dean like a child. “I…I don’t want to, but…Dean, I think I have to kill him.” 

There was such pain in his voice, his stance. Guilt and sorrow were weighing down on his shoulders like an almost visible weight. Dean palmed Sam’s bicep and squeezed, going for reassuring and having no idea if he was hitting his mark. 

“Sam, he’s dangerous. He’s taking out innocent people, and we need to stop him.” 

“But after what happened with Andy…”

“Forget about Andy, Sam.” Dean took his brother by the shoulders and made him look him in the eye. “Yeah, that was wrong. But it’s in the past now, Sammy. All we got’s the present. Okay?” 

Sam nodded and leaned into him, all of ten and scared of the thing under his bed. Dean’s hands slipped from his shoulders and cupped his chin, brought his face to his lips, and kissed. Sam pressed back, breathing rhythmically against him, and then opened his mouth against Dean’s, just enough so their mouths fit together instead of just pressing flatly, just so Dean’s long-dormant tongue could taste his little brother’s breath. 

Some things are about effort; others are just natural progression. 

:::

Gordon was lying in wait in some old house when Sam went in. Ava warned him about the tripwire in the back, so he set it off and drew Gordon out. Then he put a gun to the back of Gordon’s skull and told him to get the fuck down. 

Gordon chose to fight. He got Sam on the ground, too, on his back with a hunting knife in his face. 

“You’re no better than the filthy things you hunt,” Gordon snarled as he glared down at Sam. “Bad enough you’re some demon’s bitch, but now you’re working with angry spirits, too? How can you just betray your own race like that, Sammy?” 

He raised the knife to finish Sam off, Sam dazed from his fall and not quick enough to move, and maybe he would have done it. Maybe Sam would have died, right then and there, at the hands of some black-and-white freak.  

But Sam had one thing Gordon didn’t count on: Dean. 

Dean was waiting, invisible even to Sam, just inside the door, and while they hadn’t exactly counted on Sam going down, they’d known Gordon would attack and forget all about Dean even being a threat. So as Gordon raised that knife, ready to kill the hellspawn he had pinned beneath him, Dean immediately became as solid as he ever was in life, grabbed Gordon’s wrist and smashed into his elbow with his own fist, breaking his arm. Gordon screamed and crumpled, and Sam sat up, grabbed the knife, and stabbed it into his throat. 

There’s a first time for everything. This was Dean’s first violent attack. 

:::

Ava went home, then her fiancé wound up dead and she went missing. They searched for her for a solid month and found nothing but her engagement ring on the floor and sulfur in her bedroom. Sam called Ellen and found them a job. 

:::

After pushing himself too far in Mississippi, Dean had apparently hit a growth spurt in his development, because every time he tried to teach himself something new, it only took him from about three days to two weeks to master. And hell, compared to the six months it had taken to learn how to become visible, even two weeks was practically instantaneous.

It was still difficult to maintain full solidity for long periods – especially if he had to be particularly active – and he only attempted it when he and Sam needed to hunt. He remained invisible whenever they were alone together, in the car or the motel, stayed out of Sam’s way while he worked and tried to help where he could – freaky or not, it was still much easier to physically interact with the world when he wasn’t trying to be solid, too – cleaning the guns or checking ammo.  

He found it quite insulting the first time he unthinkingly grabbed for a bag of rock salt to help Sam pack salt rounds for the shot guns and burned his hand, and he never told Sam how much it hurt. 

But sometimes Sammy would look up from whatever he’d been doing and seek him out. Dean would go to him and materialize before his eyes, let Sammy’s loving eyes rove over him like he’d never seen anything so beautiful, and they’d just  _be_  together. Sometimes they’d kiss, soft and barely open-mouthed. Other times Sam would just return to researching or preparing and Dean would stay nearby, resting a hand or a foot against Sam’s leg under the table. 

Maybe he couldn’t pack salt rounds or touch half the knives because they were made of iron, maybe he couldn’t quite figure out how to work a gun in his current state, but at least he could be here for Sammy. He’d done it all his life, after all. What made Death think it would be any different? 

:::

A haunted inn in Connecticut sent Dean for a loop. A little dead girl named Maggie was killing off anyone involved in selling the old place because she didn’t want her playmate, the owner’s daughter Tyler, to leave her. In a last ditch effort to keep her for herself, Maggie helped Tyler jump into the inn’s pool, and it took the owner’s mother trading her life for Tyler’s to end Maggie’s massacre. 

Pretty trippy case, would have left Dean with chills from the dolls alone had he been alive, but it was something else that was fucking with him: that little girl had been so obsessed with not being alone that she had been willing to kill for it. 

Who knew when he would get that desperate? 

He’d killed hundreds of things throughout his lifetime, and a few people, either in the line of duty or just to protect Sammy. And he’d now, as a spirit, officially helped kill a human being to save Sam. 

He felt himself sliding down a slippery slope, and much as he tried to cling to the idea that he was different, that he knew better, he knew it was going to start getting harder to keep from falling altogether. His only secure handhold was his Sammy. 

And Sammy wasn’t forever. 

:::

Sam had a nightmare. Just a run-of-the-mill nightmare, no premonitions for weeks now, and Dean flickered to his side in an instant – a rather handy trick, he had to admit, though it had taken him nearly a week to learn how and a month to perfect – and immediately materialized, pressing a hand to Sammy’s shoulder and settling him on the mattress, whispering and shushing so he’d quiet. Sammy’s breathing returned to normal and he stopped moaning, his eyes cracked open and settled on Dean above him. 

“Hey, little brother,” Dean said softly, going for soothing. “It’s just a dream, okay? Go back to sleep.” 

“Dean…” Sam muttered, and grasped Dean’s hand. “Stay.” 

Dean furrowed his eyebrows, confused. “I’m not going anywhere, Sammy. It’s okay.” 

“No, Dean… _stay_.” He pulled at Dean’s arm sleepily, a little noise escaping his lips. “Please.” 

And Dean understood. And he lay down next to Sam in the motel room bed, with its scratchy blankets and hard-as-rock mattress, and curled around Sam. Sammy snuggled down Dean’s torso and buried his nose into Dean’s neck and chest. His hair tickled Dean’s chin and Sam’s nose was surprisingly pointed, but Dean wrapped his arms around him and held him close nonetheless. 

This used to happen when Sam was just a kid. He’d get scared of a storm, or a movie Dean shouldn’t have let him watch, and he’d snuggle into Dean’s chest in the bed they shared and they’d sleep that way, tangled in each other, Dean looking out for him. As they got older and Dad started getting them separate beds it stopped, and Dean felt like he lost a piece of himself when it did, one more thing he couldn’t give Sam. 

Dean knew they were approaching some kind of line. The first time he’d kissed Sam had been out of desperation, reaching deep into himself and pulling out whatever he could to tell Sam how much he loved him, how much he needed him. Obviously that aspect had escalated, still so careful but he could feel the edge of reason slipping every time it happened, knew it would eventually become too much. 

Fuck the line. They’d never really cared about the lines before, in their way of life or how they earned their cash, and their relationship with each other and their dad had been the complete opposite of normal since late 1983. And now, with Dean still hanging around six months after his own death and Sam slowly approaching some fucked up, demon-induced destiny, maybe a little comfort wasn’t the kind of line they really needed to care about. 

Dean ran his hand up Sam’s neck and threaded his fingers through Sammy’s stupid hair. Then he closed his eyes and relaxed, listening to Sam breathing cuddled into his side, and thinking that he could definitely get used to this. 

:::

In Springfield, Ohio, Sam called Bobby for help. There was weird shit going on around the university – like, slow-dancing aliens weird – and Bobby drove down to see if he could help. Sam had to admit he was glad to see him, they hadn’t even spoken since he lent Sam his Chevelle, but it hurt him to force Dean to stay invisible and quiet while Bobby was there. They’d been so close lately, in emotion and proximity, and he didn’t want to do anything to risk losing that. 

So Bobby came into a completely normal, singly-occupied motel room, ready to sort through impossible clues with him. They sat down at the desk in the corner, cracked open a beer each, and began the breakdown. Twenty minutes later, Bobby informed Sam that, not only was he an idjit, but he had a Trickster on his hands. 

While they sat together paring wooden stakes, Sam trying to think where the best place would be to get blood to dip them in, Bobby asked, nonchalant as asking about the weather, “So how’s Dean?” 

Sam dropped his half-carved stake and paring knife. “Wh-what?” 

Bobby gave him a look. “Don’t bullshit me, boy. I’ve known for a while.” 

“How long?” Sam asked, voice quavering. 

“Not long after the accident,” Bobby answered, sighing and going back to his carving. “Flickering lights, and stuff kept turning up knocked over and broken, and you’re an angry boy but you’ve never broken my things. And if you ever did, it wasn’t without profuse apology.” He slid a sideways smile at Sam. 

“Why didn’t you say anything? I mean, why is Dean still alive? I thought you’d…” 

“Burn his bones?” Bobby supplied. “I tried. Asked you a thousand times, didn’t I? But you wouldn’t let me, kept saying you’d need time to fix things, and I knew if you were talking like that it meant  _you_  knew about Dean, too, and wanted him to stay.” He shrugged, didn’t look up. “I figured, it wasn’t my place, you know? Your daddy, though, I burned him.” 

Sam’s stomach turned to lead. He hadn’t thought about Dad’s body  _once_  since Dean came back, and he’d certainly never considered what might have happened to his spirit. And it hit him, hard and sudden, that they thought he’d made a deal, Dean’s life for his soul…which meant, if that really was what killed him, his Dad’s soul…

“Dad’s in Hell,” he breathed, so quiet he wasn’t sure Bobby would hear him. He raised his head and met the older man’s dark eyes, and he realized Bobby already understood. “You knew?” Sam asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“You didn’t want to hear it. You were too wrapped up in Dean, in yourself, as always. You knew he was gone, done your mourning. Nothing good would come of it.” 

“How’d you know?” 

“After you came over for those summoning herbs, the ones he told you were for protection, I called him up. He told me what he was gonna do, that it was to protect you boys. I must’ve hollered at him for ten minutes, but he never let up. Said he was gonna do whatever it took to keep you two safe.” Bobby swallowed hard, let his eyes dart away for a moment, then brought them back to Sam’s. “Never could talk John out of anything.” 

Sam laughed a little, uncomfortable beneath Bobby’s stare, but couldn’t come up with anything to say. 

“So?” Bobby asked after long minutes without a response from Sam. “Are you ever gonna tell me how Dean is?” 

Sam swallowed and pressed his lips together, not sure how much to reveal. Bobby knew how much time had passed, and he knew a hell of a lot more about spirits than they did so he would know just how much Dean could have progressed, but…

Bobby suddenly leapt from his chair, knocking it over and dropping his stake and knife to the floor with a crash, eyes wide and face slack with shock. 

Sam spun to look and saw Dean standing in the farthest corner of the room. 

“Heya, Bobby,” Dean said, trademark smirk on his lips but true happiness in his eyes. “It’s been a while.” 

:::

Highway 41 was dark and lonely this time of year, especially this late at night, but Sam and Dean knew what they were looking for: two ghosts, Molly McNamara and Jonah Greely, who had been chasing each other around this strip of asphalt since the car crash that killed them both in 1992. 

They didn’t expect Molly to come running straight to them, stopping their car and asking for help, not knowing she was dead. 

She was looking for her husband, she said. They’d crashed into a tree and he was missing, and now she was being chased by some eviscerated man who wanted to hurt her. Sam talked to her and explained a version of the night’s events to her – humoring her supposed humanity – and together the three of them searched for Jonah Greely’s bones to burn. Greely wasn’t too pleased, stopped their car and tried to fight for Molly, but Sam kept him at bay with a few salt rounds. 

“So this is really what you guys do?” Molly asked as they walked through the forest to find Jonah Greely’s house. “You’re like Ghostbusters?” 

Dean saw Sam turn to answer her, but apparently noticed that she was talking to what he must have perceived as thin air and stayed quiet. Dean made himself visible for Sammy’s sake, which didn’t appear to change how Molly saw him, and he answered simply, “Yeah, minus the jumpsuits.” 

:::

Jonah Greely made a few very violent grabs for Molly, even got her strung up in his hunting cabin once, before Sam found his bones buried by a tree, which was his grave marker, and burned them. Then they took Molly to see her husband – and his new wife. They tried to explain, to tell her she was a ghost and she and Greely both haunted the highway. 

“David,” she whispered, looking up and through the window at her husband. 

“Molly, we brought you here so you could move on,” Sam said, voice soft and trying to be soothing. 

“No, I have to tell him – ”

“What? That you love him? That you’re sorry? Molly, he already knows that.” Sam stepped forward and touched her shoulder lightly. “David’s already said his goodbyes, Molly. Now it’s your turn. This is  _your_  unfinished business.” 

Molly was crying, looking between both of them with tears in her eyes. “What am I supposed to do?” 

“Just…” Sam searched for what to say. “Let go of David, of everything. You do that, we think you’ll move on.” 

“But you don’t know where?” Molly met his eyes, pleading for answers. 

“No,” Sam admitted. “But Molly, you don’t belong here. Haven’t you suffered long enough?” He kept his eyes on hers, but he felt himself desperately needing to look at Dean, to let him know he wasn’t talking about him in the slightest. “It’s time. It’s time to go.” 

:::

Molly nodded, moved from under Sam’s hand, and stepped past him. Her eyes met Dean’s, and she looked like she was seeing him for the first time. 

“You…?” 

Dean pressed his lips together hard, nodding curtly. Molly looked back at Sam incredulously for a split second before turning completely from both of them and walking forward. Dean watched her watching the sunrise, saw the sunlight turn white and warm over her as a man appeared at her elbow, dressed in a suit. A reaper. He took her hand and she, either unaware or undisturbed by his presence, simply lifted her head and faded into the light. 

Dean decided this was one of the most surreal moments of his life. 

:::

There was a werewolf in San Francisco, attacking local working girls and, most recently, some lawyer. Sam and Dean tracked down the lawyer’s assistant, a hot brunette named Madison. It hurt Dean to watch her rake her eyes over Sam, flirt with him while he protected her, but it felt good to watch Sam, too. See how he played her attraction up, used it to get better answers to his FBI guy questions. 

A false lead on Madison’s ex-boyfriend Kurt found them the real wolf-man – or woman, as fate would have it. They found Kurt with his chest cavity torn apart not far from his apartment with Madison crouched over him, devouring his heart. She took off, of course, but Sam had always been a damn good shot. 

Another hooker died the next night, and they tracked the blood back to Madison’s building, but it was her neighbor. Sam took him out, too. 

“Fucking things are setting up franchises,” Dean said as they booked it for the stairs before the cops could show up. Sam laughed and kissed him once they got in the car. 

:::

Dean was standing, invisible, behind Sam in a diner in the middle of nowhere in the pouring rain when the worst happened. The lights started flickering – he’d managed to stop doing that, thank god, so he knew it wasn’t him – and suddenly everyone was dead and Sammy was gone. 

:::

Sam woke up lying on the ground in some old, abandoned town. He searched the place and wound up finding Ava locked in a shed, as well as a soldier named Jake Talley who was super strong and a girl named Lily who could stop hearts with a touch. He also found them an Acheri demon, which helped him prove his point that they had all been brought there by the Yellow-Eyed Demon. They set up protection for themselves, salt lines at the doors and windows, whatever weapons they could fashion. 

But Sam thought only of Dean. 

:::

Dean wasn’t as powerful without Sam. Apparently, just as his own comatose body had grounded his spirit in the hospital, it was Sam who had been grounding him ever since. He could still move fairly freely, flickering around mostly, but talking was difficult and being solid was damn near impossible; but at the moment, panic was making up for his lack of worldly tether, and he flickered halfway across the state to Bobby’s house for help. 

At the sight of Dean flickering like bad reception with no Sam by his side, Bobby loaded them into an old pickup truck and headed for the Roadhouse, deciding they needed Ash’s help and Ellen’s connections. It was a burnt husk when they got there. 

:::

Sam and Jake were hunting through piles of broken pipes when they heard Ava scream. They ran outside and found her, staring up at a windmill – and Lily, hanging and dead by her neck. Sam held Ava while she cried, then ushered the three of them back inside. 

Jake broke the metal pipes into pieces, Ava rocked back and forth, and Sam stared out the window, looking at the engraved tree on a bell in the middle of the town square. He focused hard on it, seeing its every groove and recess, all the detail he could muster. He thought of the Demon, how it must have brought them all here for a reason, and focused on that, too. 

 _Dean…_  he thought.  _See this, Dean. I need your help._ It was a long shot, but it was all he had. 

:::

“Concentrate, son, just think.” 

Bobby was convinced Dean’s connection to his brother would be what saved them, that Dean would be able to find Sam if he focused, a map spread out on the hood of the truck for Dean to point to. But at the moment, they were still standing in the shadow of the Roadhouse’s still-hot skeleton, and Dean hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything  _but_  Sam for hours and he still had no idea. 

“It’s like meditation, boy,” Bobby said. “It’s hard, I know, but you gotta try. You gotta get to Sam.” 

“You think I don’t know that?” Dean snarled, glaring at Bobby’s stupid, ignorant face (effective, considering Dean wasn’t visible or audible at the moment). His eyes were shut tight, blocking out the image of the Roadhouse, of Bobby, and trying to see Sam. At his best, learning a new trick took a few days – standing here, scared and without his Sammy, Dean didn’t think he had a chance. 

Before he knew what hit him, Dean was on the ground, doubled over as images burst through his head. A bell with an oak tree engraved on it, Sam’s face, and Ava’s, and two other people he didn’t know. Also, an overwhelming sense of…yellow? 

Dean grabbed at the pen Bobby had set out for him and wrote “bell, tree” in giant letters over the map and thrust it into Bobby’s hands. Bobby looked at what he’d written and asked, “A bell with a tree on it?” Dean banged the hood of the car. “I’ll take that as a yes. I know where that is, get in the car.” 

:::

Sam was dreaming, he knew he was. That’s the only reason the Yellow-Eyed Demon was there, talking to him, calling Sam its favorite. Showing him the night his mother died. Sam watched Mary run into the nursery, slam into a wall and creep up it to the ceiling, watched her bleed and catch fire as she stared down at her six-month-old son who had demon blood on his lips. 

It all made sense, everything that had ever gone wrong. It was all Sam’s fault, because Sam had demon blood in him, because he wasn’t even  _human_. 

He woke up to Jake shaking him awake, telling him Ava was missing. They found her outside, rubbing her temples as black smoke curled around her into another Acheri demon. It attacked Jake and Sam slashed it with an iron pipe, and before Ava could resummon it Jake snapped her neck. 

“Come on,” Sam said to Jake over Ava’s body before heading for the woods. “I think we can make it out of here now.” 

“Not ‘we,’ Sam,” Jake said, and Sam turned to look at him. Jake’s eyes were set, wide and a little crazy. “Only one of us is getting out of here. I’m sorry.” 

“What?” Sam said dumbly, hardly believing what he was hearing. 

“I had a vision,” Jake said. “The Yellow-Eyed Demon, he talked to me. He told me how it was.” 

The same dream, probably telling Jake how  _he_  was its favorite. “No, Jake, listen, you can’t listen to him.” 

“Sam, he’s not letting us go. Only one. If we don’t play along, he’ll kill us both.” Jake made a sympathetic face. “Now, I like you man, I do, but do the math here. What good’s it do for both of us to die? I can get out of here, I get close to the demon, I can kill the bastard.” 

“You come with me, we can kill him together!” Sam reasoned, trying to make Jake see the other side. 

“How do I know you won’t turn on me?” 

“I won’t!” 

“I don’t know that.” 

:::

The pickup stopped at the gate of a crumbling ghost town called Cold Oak and Dean started flickering into every decrepit old building he saw, searching for Sam. He could feel him more strongly with every movement, every new landing one step closer to his Sammy. 

“Dean!” Bobby called, and Dean flickered to his side. They were at the edge of an empty, overgrown field, across which Sam had just laid some guy out. 

As he watched his brother throw away his weapon as he stood over the guy’s limp body, Dean felt his body fill and he materialized, solid as life and everything he’d worked to create in the last six months restored. He saw Sam’s head come up and their eyes met, and Dean grinned so widely just at the sight of him he thought his face might split in two. Sammy started walking toward him, holding his arm like his shoulder might be dislocated, and Dean could do nothing but jog forward, in love with Sam all over again just by knowing he was alive. 

“Dean!” Sam called, eyes tired but shining and so fucking happy. 

“I’m right here, Sammy,” Dean called back, that weird pressure of unfallen tears welling behind his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, remember?” 

Halfway to each other across the field, Dean registered too late that the guy had risen and was behind Sam, and – was that a fucking  _knife_? 

“Sam, look out!” Dean cried, but it was too fast and Dean was too slow flickering over, and by the time he had rematerialized the guy was running and Sam was slipping to the ground. “No!” 

Bobby was off after the guy, running into the night, but all Dean could see was Sam, falling forward and eyes rolling back in his head. 

“Sam!” Dean screamed, grabbing for his brother as both their knees hit the cold, wet grass. “Woah, woah, Sam, Sam! Hey!” He held Sam up by his clothes and Sam’s head fell onto his shoulder, neck powerless to support it. 

“Come here. Let me look at you…” Dean pressed his palm against the wound and his hand came away covered in blood. He could feel the break in Sam’s spine, knew that was why his head was lolling and blood was dribbling from between Sam’s lips, but still he took Sam’s face in his hands, supporting his neck with his fingers, and said,

“Hey, look at me. It’s not even that bad.” He hitched Sam higher into his arms, feeling his own strength fading as Sam’s did. “It’s not even that bad, all right? Sammy?” 

Sam’s eyes rolled and his head slumped backwards. “Sam!” 

Dean propped Sam against him and held his face steady, forcing Sam to see his eyes. “Hey, listen to me. We’re gonna patch you up, okay?” He pressed a chaste but pleading kiss on Sam’s bloody lips. “You’re gonna be good as new. I’m gonna take care of you.” Another kiss, but he had to hold Sam’s head to keep it from falling away from his mouth. “I’m gonna take care of you. I’ve got you.” He stroked down Sam’s face and pushed his hair off his forehead so he could see. “That’s my job, right? Watch out for my pain-in-the-ass little brother?” Sam’s eyes were glazing over, eyelids growing heavier. “Sam? Sam! Sammy!” 

Sam’s eyes slipped shut, the last gleam of recognition in his eyes extinguished as his eyelashes rested finally against his cheeks. His whole body slumped forward, bent awkwardly against Dean so he had to claw at his back and lift him again to look at him. 

“No,” Dean whispered. “No, no, no, no.” He couldn’t let this happen. “Oh, god.” His brother couldn’t die. He clutched Sam to him and wrapped him in his arms, trying to support his weight even as he felt his body becoming less solid. Dean’s hands were everywhere at once, not sure where to hold, finally resting one on Sam’s back and one tangled in his hair. 

“Sam!” he shrieked, voice breaking as it stopped working altogether. The last thing he felt was Sam’s final breath before Sam fell through Dean and landed face down in the mud. Dean’s arms hung stupidly in the air as he cried, sobbing with shaking shoulders and dry eyes and Dean had never before wished so hard for tears to actually come. 

“God, Sam…” he wept, turning to look at his brother’s lifeless body. “I’m so sorry, Sammy. I’m so fucking sorry. I…” There was nothing to say, nothing he could do. 

He was just another lost, wandering spirit, misguided and stupid and fucking worthless. 

“Sam?” 

He heard Bobby approaching from behind him, heard his heavy breath and weary steps, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn around. Not that it mattered, since he walked right through Dean to pick Sam off the ground and prop him in his lap. Dean could just see the man’s eyes from under his cap, and they were full of tears. 

“Dammit, boy,” he was muttering, “we all do our best to keep you safe, and this…this is how it ends?”  He pressed a wrinkled hand to his face, and Dean could see how tired he was, of losing people, of hunting. Dean knew the feeling, knew it so clearly and singly at that very moment, and he bowed his head and looked down at his little brother, body splayed across the mud and Bobby’s folded legs and through Dean’s hips.   
“Sam…” 

“Dean?” Dean started and leapt from the ground. That couldn’t…it wasn’t Sammy’s  _voice_? 

But it was. And there was Sam, all six foot five of him, standing just behind him and staring down at his own body. 

“Sammy!” Dean cried, joy and an intense feeling of failure battling inside him at the sight – because his little brother was on his feet again, but it meant he… 

“Dean…” Sam whispered, staring down at himself. “Am I…am I dead?” 

“What?” Dean said, grasping for anything but the truth. “No, of course not, you’re – you’re just – ” 

“Dean?” Sam’s eyes were begging him not to lie. 

Dean swallowed past the lump in his throat, chest caught in a knot, and he could only nod. 

Sammy’s eyes went full of emotion and his lips quivered. “So I’m…I’m a spirit? I’m like you?” 

Dean felt his heart fill to bursting in his chest and he said, “Yeah, Sammy. But it’s not too late, okay? We can fix this. I can talk to Bobby, I can get him to look for something for us, there’s…there’s gotta be something we can do, okay?” His eyes were wide and he was pleading, praying Sam would listen. 

“Dean, I…” Sammy looked down at his hands, must have been seeing the weird way they looked solid and transparent at the same time. “I’m dead. I’m…” 

Dean strode forward and grabbed his brother by his shoulders, and he felt the static-shock for just a moment before feeling Sam’s jacket. Sam was new, and Sam was fragile, but Sam’s body was  _right there_ , which meant he had to still be a little strong, right? 

“Sammy, you have to listen to me, okay?” Dean said, staring straight into Sam’s eyes even though they were still focused on his hands. “There’s still a lot we can do, okay? Everything is about to start freaking out on you, but until the reaper comes, we have time, okay? You’ve got strength still left in you, Sammy, you – ”

Fear and understanding dawning in his eyes, he turned back to Dean and frantically asked, “When does the reaper come? Dean?” 

“Don’t worry about that right now, okay?” Dean stalled. “Sammy, I need you to talk to Bobby for me, I don’t think I can, but you – ” 

“The reaper’s coming…” Sam babbled, looking up at the sky like the reaper would swoop upon them from it. “What do I say, when the reaper comes, what…?” 

There was rustling behind Dean, Bobby standing up and gathering Sam in his arms. He was trying to drag him away, and Sam’s eyes turned wistful as he watched his body being taken from him. 

“Sam, you’re not listening to me!” Dean insisted, squeezing Sam’s shoulders more tightly, needing Sam aware, needing Sam here. 

“No, Dean,  _you’re_  not listening!” Sam shouted, suddenly focused. “A reaper is going to come here and ask me the same question she asked you, and I…” His jaw clenched for a moment, and Dean could tell he was starting to feel how empty his body was. “I don’t know what to say.” 

“Sam, you’re gonna say no!” Dean said. “You’re not gonna  _die_ , you can’t…you can’t just  _leave_  me here!” 

“He won’t.” 

Both brothers turned sharply to see a dark-haired woman standing at the edge of the field. Dean recognized her instantly. 

Tessa. 

:::

“Hello, Dean,” she said, smiling warmly at him as she approached like they were old friends, before turning to Sam. “And it’s nice to meet you, Sam.” 

“You…” Sam stuttered. “You’re the reaper?” But she looked so normal, so…not deadly. 

She nodded serenely. “Yes. You may call me Tessa.” 

“He won’t be calling you anything but gone,” Dean snarled, stepping between her and Sam. “He’s not going anywhere.” 

Tessa was unaffected, looking straight past him, eyes trained eerily on Sam, and he squirmed under the weight of her gaze. 

“Sam, you have a choice to make,” she said calmly. “You can come with me and rest, or you can stay here. But you cannot return to life. That is the only thing you cannot do.” 

“Sam, don’t you listen to her,” Dean said, turning his back on Tessa completely. “Please, Sam, you can’t go, okay? We can keep your body safe and we can find a way, all right? I don’t care what it takes, we can fix this!” 

“If I go with you,” Sam said, doing his best to ignore Dean and think straight, “then I’ll be leaving Dean here alone. I can’t do that to him. Not after he stayed behind to protect me.” 

“He made that choice, Sam,” Tessa said. “He chose to stay, and he knew the risks as well as you do. Having you to cling to has kept him sane over the past year, has given him purpose. But we all knew you wouldn’t live forever, Sam. And you can’t let his decision cloud what you are going to do.” 

“He’s all I have,” Dean said, turning to Tessa, his voice small and scared and nothing like what Sam had grown up with. “You can’t do this, you can’t take him. I’ll go crazy without him, you know that, please.” 

“I’ll go if Dean can come, too,” Sam said flatly, holding his head high. “But otherwise, I’m staying here. I…I need him.” 

Tessa’s big brown eyes were soft, sympathetic, but unflinching. “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “But Dean knew what he was doing when he made his choice, and he cannot go back on what he said now.” 

“I did it to protect my brother!” Dean yelled. 

“And I’m done needing protecting!” Sam added, though he felt what a low blow it was when Dean turned his hurt eyes on him. But he did his best to stay calm, and turned his attention back to the reaper. “Please, Tessa, you…you know we can’t do this alone. I can’t move on and let Dean stay here.” 

“You can stay with him,” Tessa replied coolly. “But the same will go for you. It’s eternity, Sam.” 

“And do what?” Sam asked. “Find a house to haunt and start killing off every new owner? No. No, I’m not gonna let myself become some hunter’s latest case.” 

“Sammy,” Dean called softly, and Sam tore his eyes away from Tessa’s and looked at him. “Sammy, please.” 

“Dean…” 

But before Sam could speak, Tessa shrieked and fell to the ground, writhing, and Sam and Dean spun. Sam’s eyes landed on an older man walking forward, hand outstretched toward her. The Yellow-Eyed Demon from his dream. 

Tessa lifted her head and screamed, “No! You can’t do this!” 

“Sorry, sweetheart,” the demon said, smirking at her as its yellow eyes flashed. “But you have an appointment with another kid of mine just a few states over, so I’m gonna need this one back.” 

She screamed again and clutched at her chest and stomach, her face a grimace of pain. 

“Hey there again, Sammy,” it called jovially, looking up at Sam while it tortured Tessa. 

“You?” Sam said incredulously. 

“Sam, is that…is that the  _demon_?” Dean demanded. 

“I know, I know,” the demon said airily, a look of mock guilt on its face, “you’re not supposed to play favorites with your children, but god, Sammy, did you ever talk to Jake for more than about forty seconds?” It gave a longsuffering sigh and shook its head. “He was so easy to manipulate it was almost sad. He’s nothing but a dumb jarhead, no good for what I need him for.” The demon released Tessa, leaving her gasping on the ground. “Come on with me, Sammy, we’ve got an army to lead.” 

“No! I’m not going anywhere with you!” Sam yelled, stepping back and standing beside his brother. 

The demon rolled its eyes. “Really, Sam? I’m giving you quite an opportunity, here, you know. I can bring you back to life, right here and now, and all you have to do is come with me.” 

“No.” Sam stood tall, tried to feel strong in his make-believe body. “I’m staying here with my brother.” 

The demon cocked its head, looked between Sam, Dean, and Tessa on the floor. “Your brother, huh?” it mused, then settled its yellow eyes on Dean. 

“Hiya, Dean,” it said. “Funny how you’re the forgettable Winchester until lives are at stake, isn’t it?” 

“Fuck you,” Dean deadpanned. 

“No thanks, I’m not as flustered by your pretty packaging as some.” It turned back to Sam and said, “Okay, new deal: I’ll bring you,  _and your brother_ , back to life, in perfectly healthy bodies, and all you have to do is join me. Whaddaya say?” 

“Sam, no!” Dean said, grabbing Sam’s sleeve. “Don’t you do it, Sammy. Dad already tried to deal with this thing and look where he wound up. It’s lying!” 

“Actually, I tried my best on that one,” the demon said thoughtfully, “but you were a little too quick with this bitch for me to hold up my end.” It gestured nonchalantly at Tessa, who was still gasping on the ground. “Your daddy, though, he knew what he was getting into, should have been a little more specific.” 

Sam glared at the demon, ready to refuse again, when he noticed the Colt hanging from its belt. Sam turned away from the demon and looked Dean in the eyes. This was their only chance, and the war was far from over. Sam couldn’t move on and leave Dean behind, and they couldn’t just stay here as spirits going crazy for the rest of eternity. This way they might stand a chance at winning. 

“Dean, it’s okay,” he said, touching Dean’s cheek. “I’m not going dark side. But this is the only way.” 

“Sammy, please,  _no_ ,” Dean begged. “This will never end, Sam. It’s just a big loop, one really shitty CD on repeat. Just…” He held Sam’s jacket in a fist, eyes dancing with need and fear. “Stay here, with me. There’s no going back, and we can stay like this forever.” He stepped forward, moved into his brother’s space, molded their bodies together and pressed his forehead into Sam’s collarbone. “Just you and me, Sammy. That’s all we need. 

Sam pulled Dean’s face up with one finger and placed a small, lasting kiss on his brother’s lips, then breathed, “No, Dean.” He pulled back enough to gaze into Dean’s green little-boy eyes and smiled. Then he turned back to face Azazel and said, “All right. Let’s make a deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Snow Patrol song "Set the Fire to the Third Bar," which for whatever reason became this fic's anthem, as for a long time I either 1) could only write if it was playing or 2) rushed to my laptop the second I heard it start playing, as I became filled with inspiration. 
> 
> Many thanks to my family and friends, without whom this would not have been possible. To my grandma for betaing, my dad for cheerleading, my friends for support and inspiration - it's too long a list to do any of you justice, but thanks all the same.


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